Not sure if this is of any interest, and not sure how many people here have both
DTV receivers -AND- DVB receivers. However, I just learned something that came in very handy.
I have a 3-sat, 2-receiver DTV setup. Yesterday, after a thunderstorm a couple days ago, I noticed that one of my 2 DTV receivers had conked out. Interestingly, out of 5 satellite dishes I have installed, this is the second time that lightning has knocked out one of my DTV receivers, and this current DTV setup is the only one of my 5 systems that was "professionally" installed, and grounded. In fact my first DTV dish, which I installed myself, and didn't ground at all, lasted 5 years without a problem, but in less than 2 years with this professional install (which I did to get a free local channel upgrade), the system has burned out 2 different receivers (and a vcr connected to it). But that's another story...
Anyway, my #2 receiver stopped working. I did a quick check and noticed that it wasn't sending any DC power to the LNBF. So I rigged up a "T" and pulled an old analog sat receiver out of my junk pile and used it to power the LNBF. This "worked", and I was able to switch between odd and even transponders by flipping a switch on the analog receiver.
HOWEVER, there was a problem, and that was that I was only able to tune the 101 satellite. I did a little research on another forum, and found that the satellite switching was done with a 22khz signal. So I replaced the old analog receiver, with my old Fortec Lifetime DVB receiver, expecting to be able to switch satellites by turning 22khz on and off, and still switch polarities with V/H polarity on the Lifetime.
I first tried to switch polarities using existing channels on the Lifetime, however what I found was that the channels was popping on and off and on and off. I decided that this must be because I had all my channels set up to control a 4 way
DiseqC switch, and the DiseqC signals were causing the DTV receiver to switch back and forth between satellites.
So what I ended up doing was to define 2 new satellites, one for DTV101, with 22khz off and DiseqC OFF, and one for DTV119, with 22khz ON and DiseqC OFF. I saved 2 channels, one H and one V on each of these 2 satellites.
This worked perfectly. With my broken DTV receiver, I am now able to access both R and L polarities on both the 101 and 119 satellites by switching between these 4 channels on my Fortec Lifetime receiver. I also get another way of watching NASA TV, since one of the 119 channels I saved on the Lifetime was the NASA channel.
Anyway, not sure if this will be of any interest to anyone, but I figured I document the process just in case anyone else loses a DTV receiver to lightning. This can keep you in business till you get a replacement.
EDIT: I just discovered another important aspect of doing what I did above. I noticed that if I left the receiver on a local channel on 119, that when I'd turn on the TV the next day, the screen would be blank. I'd switch to another channel, and it would say channel not available, then I'd switch channels on my DVB receiver, and eventually I'd see the icon for my local channel, but it would then say searching for satellite, so I'd change the DVB channel again, and finally the local channel would tune in. I thought that channels just got bumped on my remotes when I was tuned elsewhere, so I carefully wrote down which DVB channels gave what DTV channels. And since all my channels were tuned via right hand polarization on 119, I deleted the left hand polarization channel to simplify surfing to the channels.
Well that was yesterday. Today, I tuned in, and found a blank screen. I tried to switch channels on both the DTV and on the DVB, but nothing would bring in the local channels on 119. Since I had written down channel numbers, I knew I was on the right channel. I also went into the dish tuning window and verified that I was in fact receiving both 101 and 119. I fought with the thing for a couple hours, rebooting and trying everything. Finally, I figured it out. When you FIRST switch to a local channel, apparently the receiver first has to tune to a left hand polarization channel, apparently to download a guide or something, even though the channel you're looking for is on right hand polarization. So I found that if, for example, I was on CNN, 202 on 101, and then went to a local channel, I had to switch the DVD to a left hand polarization channel for just a second or two, THEN switch to the right hand polarization.
So what happened was that by deleting the left hand polarization channel, I made it impossible to tune the local channels.
So if you try the above, be sure to define all 4 channels even if you only have channels on 3.
Edit #2: Had a power failure yesterday, which set me back to square one. Tried to recover via method mentioned in Edit #1, and it didn't work. :-(
I fought with it for about an hour. Finally got it. I think the key, is that it has to download on one (not sure which) of the 2 119 polarities for more than a few seconds to download data. Previously, I was sitting on the DVB channel only for a few seconde, and was too impatient. When I let it sit there for a long time, like 5 minutes, it eventually started working. Not sure of exact process, but I booted up on 202, while on the 101 channel, then switched to a local channel, and let it sit on one of the 119 polarities for quite a while, then after a while, "searching for signal" appeared, at which point I switched to the other polarity. After a while, I was able to view the locals and switch back and forth quickly between 119 and 101.
Linear Mode
