₦airaland Forum

Dvbguy/Bodejohn,

I need to drag you guys back to this forum cos i have finally gotten myself a dvbs usb box that works with progdvb, and i have been trying to start data grabbing with no luck. first of all, i do not achieve up to 70% signal strenght when i connect the lnb direct to the box, but if i loop it through the decoder before passing it on to the lnb, the decoder sends the extra current needed to boost up signals and by signal strength lifts up to the 72 - 75% level, of course this means i have to be careful about the channel that is showing on the tv screen if not when i'm watching a V channel, the H channels on the laptop disappear,
But the main problem is that after configuring everything, the PID scanner runs but fails to find any PIDs on all the data channels on w3a 12520 and 12728, even though they all have pretty good signal strengths. now i have got both filegraber and skynet modules in the progdvb (6.12), but nothing, even when i downgrade progdvb to 4.45 nothing doing. i tried manually entering the pids you posted earlier but still, nothing is working.
so what do you guys think? (please note i am using a motorized 1.8m dish and the usb box is the same one whose picture is on this page).

Litaninja, (or anyone else with a DVB-s USB box)

Have you been able to use your box to view signals from Multi-tv or AIT?
this is because they are transmitted in dvbs2 format, but the card is just for dvbs, however, the progdvb modules provide support for dvbs2, so theoretically, one should be able to watch and mpeg4 stream with the same box.

(please not, i do not want a response from someone who has not tried this out, telling me it should be obvious to me that dvbs devices are not forward-compatible with dvbs2 transmissions, i just want someone who has tried it out to give me feed back).

Litaninja,

Thanks for the reply. Actually, progdvb does not support the dm20s device as i earlier stated, i did try your suggestion out, going from device to device, and when ever i tried starting 3 different devices, the thing crashed. well, that is all in the past now, the files i downloaded from the link i gave the other day, was able to reinstall the device with different drivers (advanced dvb usb 2.0box), and installed the right files into the progdvb modules which made it able to recognise the card with absolutely no problems whatsoever. now i am able to use progdvb.
however, i just checked the najmsat website and found there is currently no support for ART on progdvb right now, but i'll keep checking, i'm really hungry right now and can't think clearly.
by the way, you could try your hands on offline downloading and see, just check the thread on nairaland for more details.

JUJUKEMIST,

Bro, good to hear from you again, i see you still posted those pictures. how is the setup doing, hope it's working great for you. Maiduguri is running me down, but how we go do? i'm just hoping i'll run into some money soon so i can send for that motorized 2.4m dish and beg adewest to comeover and help me with the installation. how is the battle coming along?
cheers.

Litaninja,

Okay, My system runs windows xp sp2, the usb box is installed with dm20s drivers (i believe it's the same as yours), and i installed it by attaching the device and after the system finds the new hardware, i use the installation wizard to finish the installation.
The device can allow me use the 'follow come' dvb player to watch FTA stations, but then again that's only the tip of the iceberg isn't it?
Progdvb does not provide support for dm20s drivers, i tried selecting BDA drivers but nothing doing. it accepts the device if u use kword dvbs, but you can't watch anything. so i uninstalled the device, and tried to install it as another type of device by downloading several drivers from the net, including BDA, Nova wintv, e.t.c, but the system refused to install it as anything other than a dm20s device. so i had to go online and look for other alternatives.

But you said you got yours to work, how did u go about that?




MODIFIED,


I have been able to modify the drivers of the device to accept the dvbs box, so i now i'm off home to find out if the progdvb will accept the card.

Litaninja,

Saw your text quite late so couldn't respond immediately. progdvb is the most supported program for dvb cards/boxes for doing just about anything i.e watching encrypted channels, offline downloading, e.t.c. Unfortunately, we have acquired devices which are not supported under progdvb. i was searching for any reference to the dm20s drivers and progdvb when i came across Bodejohn's post that he managed to get past that problem on the offline browsing thread. I think he was refering to this post on this arabic thread hxxp://stardvb.com/forum/t-40579.html, and even though i have downloaded the file attached i can't really determine how to go about it because of the limitations of the translation from google, hence my post to Bodejohn for clarification.

Once we can get the card to work with progdvb, we can do a lot more with the card. ( i think). will keep u posted though. cheers

Bodejohn,

Hi, i was just going over your posts in the offline downloading segment, and i saw you were able to modify your dm20s usb box to accept progdvb via a tunisian site. could you please help me with a tutorial on how to go about doing that? thanks a lot.

Litaninja,

Thanks a lot for your help, i have just received delivery of the usb dvbs box via someone who came in from Lagos, like i explained to you on my last message, the citylink guys didn't have it so my bro had to walk around the market before he could secure it. i will give it a shot right away and let you know how it goes. thanks once again, really appreciate the effort.

Enitan,

Hello, i no go anywhere o, i dey all this while, i have been following the thread from my mobile phone's browser and posting intermittently. only that these days my laptop's connection has been bad, so posting has not been very regular. Also, i have always tried to make my comment to be educational in nature, but these days, my motorised setup is not so good, so i hardly am able to make any new discoveries. but i still dey sha.
Na Enigma na him be the real invisible man.

Litaninja,

i did see your request about the UPS issue. I have always been ashamed of myself that i mentioned it, but never took out time to write out a detailed "how to" for interested persons. Anyway, i was on a few days trip to lagos when i saw your request, so i took out my time to write out this Article. it is quite easy when you get the hang of it. if you are not an expert, get someone who is to review the article for you and show you how to progress. if you need any help, let me know. my email is available if you click on my user
The file is attached below, i have also posted it as an article here

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-316124.0.html#msg4438508

. All the best.

Moderator,

Please why are my posts being edited out of Nairaland?

Nash FTA,

Thanks for the info on skylogic. i did look up the tooway internet system from eutelsat, and it does seem promising. But i was actually hoping to hook up to nilesat or Hotbird, any satellite that is not meant for the Sub-Saharan African sub region. My reasoning is this, Most cybercafes in Nigeria have their dish (70 - 90cm sizes) pointing to the eutelsat w3a position, and these usually have very poor download speeds, the best i have seen is about 28kbps. and they do pay a premium price for this connection. Now i have a friend that just moved to the US, she doesn't bother downloading movies anymore as she can watch them online with minimal buffering times, and the only time she bothered to download anything, she noticed actual download speeds of about 120kbps, and she uses a GPRS modem for about 30/35 USD per month. can you beat that?
so i believe we in subsaharan africa are being ripped off by all these providers, who just keep reselling bandwith until your connection can barely move anymore. so i am hoping that if i do get this internet satellite stuff going, i will get it via nilesat or hotbird, and who knows, maybe i just might get actual download speeds of up to 100kbps, if not the 3mbps they are actually advertising.
but please, anyone with better info should let me know.

Nash
Appreciate your post, as always. But what i had in mind was using either Nilesat or Hotbird. My reason is this: Most cybercafes in Nigeria appear to use a provider on W3A, and they have atrociously slow connection, you can hardly get download speeds of better than 30kps on them. Meanwhile i've got a friend who just moved to the US recently, she watches videos from youtube without more than a second of buffer time, and says she records download speeds of better than 100kps using a GPRS Connection, worth about 30USD monthly. Imagine that. So i have decided these providers have decided to retail us very miserable bandwidths in Africa, at about the same cost as that provided to other continents, so i might as well say the same amount to get a European or M/Eastern connection.
But then again if u know their actual download speed, let me know so i can save myself some bother. Once again, thanks. also, i've seen procedure for a free connection, which i. Should try out in a few days time.
Adewest,
sorry i couldn't meet with you, hopefully next time.

JMS
I totally agree with you. This thread stopped being a Nigeria-only thread the moment it was created to discuss a global topic :- Free TO Air Television. I have always maintained that this thread serves as a Definitive Reference Source for issues relating to satellite installation, decoding, and other aspects of satellite TV reception for at least Subsaharan Africa. We even have frequent contributors from the UK and US (Enigma and F_Marshal). So it is sorta sad to pop in and see these totally unnecessary drama on the thread, and we expect a Newbie to go through 300 pages of similar nonsense talk to get a good idea of FTA? It's fast becoming like a needle-haystack scenario.

On a different note, with respect to Satellite downlink via our already installed dishes, i had been researching that for a while now (actually, i was wondering how to get it free of cost like some russian student's Dvbguy once mentioned). I do know it's possible but somewhat erratic, so right now, i am making arrangements to get a DVB S2 USB device for just that purpose, with a view to subscribing to two different providers, a local dial up provider for the uplink path, and then to one of the (preferably Nilesat) satellite providers for the downlink, which i hear can be super-fast (i hear up to 230kps of actual download speeds or possibly more. Please anyone with better info can also chip in.

Mr Pek/ Const66,

Informing the house of the problem is one thing, but continuing the discussion on this thread with accusations is another! Please take time out from the forum to sort this out, just the two of u.

Adewest,

will definitely call u.

eduzo:
emexi
the eagle is super fast it makes your- freedom  appear snail speed slow. It is magic, Please send me the configuration details ASAP. What a find and it is a freebie.
eduzo

emexi:
@eduzo, roger .      shall send it immediately,  its cool   ,  foget freedom for now,

sir .    my  outfit  is planning to move me to another state .  shall explain   when we meet at  the sports club

Eduzo/Emexi,

Please could you guys shed more light on the "Eagle" stuff, or make a post on the G-group if you don't want it out 'there'

Danke

Everyone,

You know we never really came to a decision on what caused the Showtime/ART revolution on abracadabra. the general consensus initially was that the manufacturers of the Echolink made an arrangement with the broadcasters to allow them provide these packages to areas of fringe reception where their legal right to broadcast does not necessarily extend. But the question i couldn't get outta my head was 'What's in it for them?' Cos in they can't really stop the decoders/cards from entering into their domain when they allow their keys to be easily accessed.
another thing that makes that whole thing sound wrong is that all the broadcasters affected all encode their broadcast with IRDETO 2. My personal belief is that since the irdeto 2 encryption system had been cracked a ways back, these cards (abracadabra and coco) are just a concerted effort by the hackers to put the system out in a manner that is sustained and non-stop. (Though you would have to wonder what's in it for them, also why a fully registered and legitimate company like echolink would go into business with these 'Hackers').
so what do you guys think?

Raw-unkat

People can't give u what they don't have, and it is really obnoxious to post the same message multiple times in a row!!! Yes u got everyone's attention, but in a really annoying way. Stop spamming this board for goodness sake. and if u don't delete your excessive messages, i'm sure the moderator can be called upon to do something about you.

Olatiler,

Stop being a whiner. Your comments about the google group is unbelievably childish and insulting to the entire thread. I reiterate what Olofofo once said to someone else, there is nothing on that group that is not available on the net. it is just posted on the group so the members can have it much more readily. i repeat, anything posted on that group was just taken from the net and posted there. and these days, since most members know where to get the stuff from in the first place, the amount of files shared there has reduced drastically. No one said you can't have anything, and if you want something badly, u can google it.
Man, do your homework well.

Hi Pito,

Could you also send the software to me also?

gangstastick@gmail.com

Danke

Haba George,
for someone whose personal message reads 'break the myth, , You know u can', you are too quick to put down someone's effort. So maybe he's got a 2.4m dish lying around doing nothing, it is worth giving it a try. Moreover, this thread still serves as a reference source for dish installation, so it is worth it having a detailed report of fish installations of various sized dishes for a particular region, if only to make reference to it at a latter time.
Please note: no personal insult intended.

Deepbluesky
even in this age of highspeed internet access, it is can still be difficult to get the info u want with respect to off-footprints sats, i can only wonder about the difficulties u faced then.

Ifende/Badaru,
please what freq(s) would one use for tracking badr sat and the one next to it with the orbit network (can't remember the name). And what signal levels can i expect in northern nigeria? Thanks in advance.

Osef,

I'm alright. what exactly can i help u with?

Hi guys,

For echolink/starsat users, there's something we've never really touched on. the EPG function for showtime channels is in Arabic while on strong it is in English, on other channels such as the Mbc packages and some of the ART channels, it is also in English. i wonder if there's a way to get around that.

LagosSky:
Happy Easter to everyone!

Can this SRT4661X_4664X_MyTV_124p_20090402 be safely loaded on 4663X decoder?

Has anyone tried a side LNB for NSS7 on Nile sat base 2.4m antenna?
I like to experement with this if no one tried before.

and

odilibe:
@LagosSky
What do u actually mean by
side lnb for nss7 on a nilesat base 2.4m antenna?
u cannot pick nss7 and nilesat
at the same time
on the same 2.4m
dish using side lnb cos the gap between 7west(nilesat) and 22west(nss7) is
15degree that
will be impossible
unless the dish is
motorised. The gap is too wide
to use side lnb.
the gap should be
b/w 4 to 6.5degrees.
or may be i did not understand
what u actually
mean.

Actually you can (in West Africa at least). Multi-Lnb setups on a single dish is fairly common up North, at the present, My static 1.8m dish receives Nilesat (7w), to the right of that Nss7 (22w), and to the left both sirius and eutelsat W3 (4 and 7e), both the sirius and w3 use a single lnb connecting rod but 2 different LNBs, tight up in a pretty shameful but effective manner.
i have noticed it is not so common south of Abuja but that does not mean it cannot be done.

Sorry to disagree with you Odilibe, but as long as there is a direct line of site from a satellite to the reflecting pan of a dish (while it is facing another bird), you can receive it (bearing in mind that the signal has to be pretty strong, hence as i once pointed out to the moderator, only the DTH signals in an area can be added to a large dish on a supplemental lnb. the difference in the angles could be as much as even 42 degrees, cos when Nollywood was still free on 36E, it was not an uncommon sight to see 1.8m dishes in Kaduna with the central focus on nilesat, and then several accessory LNBs facing NSS7, W3 and W4, though the W4 lnb had to be placed so far out on the dish to receive the signal in the required 'offset' manner.

when i first moved to Maiduguri, to prove to myself that Multi-lnb setups was only possible for direct-to-home (DTH) signals, i tracked hotbird at 13e and then tried to catch Nilesat signal to the right of centre, well, i was able to get 10758 v 27500, to come up to about 74% (i think), but that was it, none of the other freq would even 'blink' green on my screen, and i finally had to give it up. but i believe i might have gotten somewhere if i had been using a 2.4md dish as then the effective reflective diameter of the Pan i would be using for the offset reception of the nilesat signal would be almost 1.2m (compared to 0.9m on the1.8m dish).

I could post some pix for you guys later if you like, though as i said earlier, the arrangement to receive both sirius and W3 is rather horrible and not something i am proud of, though it works.

Cheers guys, and have a lovely Easter Holiday.

Jujukemist,

How body? i couldn't make it to Kd cos of some commitments i had in this town. How's the fight coming along?

Odilibe,

with respect to getting other nilesat freq when 10758 is lower than 75%, it seems that is strictly a northern/mid Nigeria thing, Adewest once pointed out to me (you would have to use the search function to read the post), that in Places like Lagos, Ibadan, e.t.c, you do not use 10758 to track nilesat cos it isn't the strongest freq receiveable there. infact the signal levels in lagos are quite different from that of the North, the example most of us are familiar with is that you cannot get MBC persia in the north (it's on AB4 wide beam), but you can get it in lagos, but you would have to compromise other signals to get it. It is quite wierd, almost as if people in Lagos receive a different nilesat from us in the north. someone once called that phenomenon by a technical name which i can't for the life of me remember.
so please don't doubt someones post just because of that particular freq. Try and take everyone's post 'as is'

Fijabi
leaving the keys pasted directly on the thread like that opens this forum and it's owners to lawsuits from those whose property rights u r infringing on. It could actually lead to us being sanctioned/closed down. I know you've apologised but we need them edited off. (please click on d modify button, that's if it's working now).
Jujukemist
how body, will u be back before easter?

Pito,

I am absolutely convinced those showtime guys timed that thing to perfection, they waited for us to settle in front of our tv screens and then "BANG" No more showtime. Actually, mine didn't happen like that, i was when the players were filing onto the pitch, the signal started scratching, i changed the channels but it was happening to all the showtime packages, so i went outside to check if maybe a spider or something was covering the lnb and i mistakenly bent one of the supporting rods holding the lnb, so i had to take my TV and decoder out to reset the signal (all this took about 10 mins) and when i got back and settled down to enjoy a nice meal with the game, well, there was no more showtime. really really heart breaking. that might evern explain why Man Utd were thrashed.

Chuks

i don't know if u are familiar with the protocol for software transfer from PC to STB but it goes something like this

1. Connect your PC and STB via a crossed (rs232c) serial cable. Pleas note the no. of the serial port you are using, if you are using a USB to serial cable, the go to start menu, right click on My Computer there and click on "Manage". this should bring up the computer management screen. Click on Device Manager on the left hand column on the screen and then on the right hand side, click on the (+) sign next to the Ports (COM & LPT), and you will see all the available serial ports, note the com port assigned to your USB to SERIAL cable.

2. Double click on the ALIMUPG55.exe file (wherever you saved it) and you will see see a dialog box asking you to 'connect'. Make sure your STB is off and then click on connect, then switch on your STB immediately afterwards the system should find your STB after a while (about 10 secs). (if you are using USB to serial you may need to click on the connect option a second time) Once it finds your STB, double-click on the space where it says AL!3329c and search for the software you want to load.

from there on, everything is easy. Please make sure you load your software under Generator coverage, cos any power failure can damage your STB.

Hope this is of help to you.

Enigma:
. If Daarsat continues along current lines they will for long remain an irrelevance for most Nigerians.[color=#006600][/color]

That my friend is the Gospel truth.
Happy B'day to you and Enitan by the way, here's wishing you guys a truly eventful year ahead. cheers.

And about Satman being the only Active female poster, there used to be someone else, i can't remember her user name right now, but i think Toxnaija can clear that up, all i remember right now is she stays at ABJ and once asked Adewest if he could help with a Nilesat installation.