Two Mercury II questions

[nhulst]

I recently installed Sadoun's S-2 Stationary Ku-band kit (Mercury II) and I've been really happy with it overall. I primarily use it for a FTA channel broadcast by my alma mater, but I also enjoy seeing what feeds come and go. (The dish is pointed at Galaxy 26.) I do have a couple of questions about the Mercury II's scan features, though...

Due to having no interest or use for CAS channels, I always configure the Power Scan or Transponder Scan for FTA only. There are still a couple of CAS channels that always get through... namely four CAS channels at 11997 and the Reuters World News Service. Any guess why the Mercury consistently fails to filter these out? It correctly identifies the encryption standard if I tune to these channels, so it's not like it is totally missing the encryption.

My other question is also related to the Power Scan function. While the scan is going on, the Mercury puts up a list of frequencies where activity was found, in the format frequency / pol / SR. However, a few frequencies have an additional item shown after the SR: [+] I've seen this repeatedly and I can't seem to figure out what it indicates, and I do not see it listed in the manual. Does anyone know what this denotes?

Thanks in advance!

[rainman]

Originally Posted by nhulst

I recently installed Sadoun's S-2 Stationary Ku-band kit (Mercury II) and I've been really happy with it overall. I primarily use it for a FTA channel broadcast by my alma mater, but I also enjoy seeing what feeds come and go. (The dish is pointed at Galaxy 26.) I do have a couple of questions about the Mercury II's scan features, though...

Due to having no interest or use for CAS channels, I always configure the Power Scan or Transponder Scan for FTA only. There are still a couple of CAS channels that always get through... namely four CAS channels at 11997 and the Reuters World News Service. Any guess why the Mercury consistently fails to filter these out? It correctly identifies the encryption standard if I tune to these channels, so it's not like it is totally missing the encryption.

My other question is also related to the Power Scan function. While the scan is going on, the Mercury puts up a list of frequencies where activity was found, in the format frequency / pol / SR. However, a few frequencies have an additional item shown after the SR: [+] I've seen this repeatedly and I can't seem to figure out what it indicates, and I do not see it listed in the manual. Does anyone know what this denotes?

Thanks in advance!

the plus sign means it has found a new TP that is not already program into the receiver.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by nhulst

.....I do have a couple of questions about the Mercury II's scan features, though...

Due to having no interest or use for CAS channels, I always configure the Power Scan or Transponder Scan for FTA only. There are still a couple of CAS channels that always get through... namely four CAS channels at 11997 and the Reuters World News Service. Any guess why the Mercury consistently fails to filter these out? It correctly identifies the encryption standard if I tune to these channels, so it's not like it is totally missing the encryption.
...

I don't know the answer to this. I've seen the same thing, and just as often, I've seen these receivers NOT pick up channels that are really FTA, unless you scan in the all+ mode.
The only thing I can think of with respect to a possible reason, is that on these sat muxes, there is a PAT (program allocation table) that has a list of the PMT PID for each channel, and for each channel, the PMT is basically a list of the audio and video PIDs for that channel. The actual audio/video streams can be FTA or encrypted, and I think that they also list the type of encryption being used (which may or may not be accurate). I don't know the data structure of the PMT well enough to say for sure, but I THINK that the PMT can also indicate whether the channel is encrypted or not (and again this may or may not be accurate).

What I'm guessing MIGHT be happening, is that in your example, the PMT might be indicating that the actual A/V PID streams are NOT encrypted when they actually are, and in my example the PMT might be saying that the A/V streams ARE encrypted when in fact they aren't.

This is all just a guess on my part, but it seems logical. I know that it ends up with you often having dozens of channels load in that you can't watch, but I think most people tend to scan in the all+ mode (or whatever it's called), just to insure that you don't miss anything.