Questions about Lifetime Classic NA

[reho33]

When I do a blind scan and the transponders are listed, why are some grayed out and others white in type?

In the scanning section, under antenna setup, what is a network scan and why would a person do that?

[wejones]

Originally Posted by reho33

When I do a blind scan and the transponders are listed, why are some grayed out and others white in type?

In the scanning section, under antenna setup, what is a network scan and why would a person do that?

I don't have a classic, I have an Ultra and a regular Lifetime, but I'm still curious.
Re blind scan, I'm not sure what you mean. Are you talking about during the scan, when the freq/SR pop up, ie before it looks for channels? Or are you talking about the transponder list that you then get when you go to do a TP scan or something? Or are you talking about what you see when you run the channel editing software on your PC? Or something else? Just curious.
I don't remember seeing that on the on-screen menus, although being a bit color blind, I may well have missed it. I'll keep an eye out for it though. However, I have seen something similar with the PC program display. Ie if you click on a satellite, in the middle section, it lists the transponders, and they come in two different colors or brightness or something. Transponders that have channels associated with them are sort of highlighted, while transponders that don't have channels associated with them are kind of grayed out. Perhaps that is what you are seeing?

Relative to the Network scan, that question has been asked several times, and I don't remember seeing a good explanation. However a few weeks ago, I was reading through the on-line manual for one of the newer Fortec receivers, and it had a partial explanation, however I can't remember off hand what it said. I "think" that it had something to do with how channels are saved after a scan, in particular if you are doing a re-scan looking for changed PIDs, or something like that. I'm not sure if I saved the PDF file of the manual I found this in or not. If I did, I'll see if I can find it again. But I have NEVER done a network scan, primarily because I didn't understand what it did, however after reading the manual for this newer receiver, I decided that it might be useful. Sorry I can't remember though.

[reho33]

Thanks. I am talking about doing a "blind scan" and it starts building the list of active TP's, then downloading the channel lists from there. I have had "grayed" out TP's but ther have been channels on them. Just another mystery......

[briand]

I'll answer that mystery.

They "greyed out" TPs are transponders that were in the list already. The "white" TPs are those that were just found during the ongoing blind scan.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by reho33

Thanks. I am talking about doing a "blind scan" and it starts building the list of active TP's, then downloading the channel lists from there. I have had "grayed" out TP's but ther have been channels on them. Just another mystery......

Something just occurred to me.
On my Ultra, this doesn't happen on the list of freq/SR values as it is searching, however down below, there is a graph showing the transponders found, and THESE are different colors, and the color "seems" to be related to the SR values, ie wider transponders seem to be yellow and narrow seem to be green and some other color I can't tell. Ie my Ultra isn't the same, but I wonder if your grayed out ones might be narrow bandwidths???
Another possibility.... could it be that the grayed out ones are transponders that have already been stored in memory from previous searches? Just a possibility. In any event, my Ultra doesn't seem to do what you describe.

[reho33]

Thanks, briand. I believe that solves it for me. Network scan is still an unknown, not that I need it but just wanted to know. BTW, I am having a lot of fun with my FTA, like it alot. (The wife doesn't though)

[wejones]

Re Network Scan..... I couldn't find it in the on line manuals, like I had suggested, however I just looked in the hard copy manual I have for my Ultra.
What it says there, is that Network Scan is pretty much like Transponder Scan, except that it:

"it scans for updated information provided by the satellite's Network Index Table" (NIT).
The way I read this, is that if you previously did a search, and found a channel, and that channel might have changed information in the NIT, that a transponder scan might just ignore the changes, and you'd have the old info. However if the Network Scan is used, apparently the new info will be saved?? So it seems like there is "some" advantage to using that instead of transponder scan.
However, most of the channels I watch don't even have an NIT, so I don't think it would be of use to me. I usually watch PBS, and it doesn't have an NIT.
I just looked at a Dishnet transponder on AMC-15, and there is an NIT on that transponder. The info in the NIT though, although very interesting, isn't particularly useful to the viewing of channels. For example, one of the hundreds of NIT entries is:

Network Name: EchoStar 110 West
Network ID: 4102 (0x1006)
Transport Stream ID: 209 (0x00d1)
Original Network ID: 4102 (0x1006)
DVB-S Orbital Position: 110.0W
Frequency: 12.341 GHz
Modulation: QPSK
Polarity: RHCP
Symbol Rate: 20000 MSps
FEC: 5/6

Notice, the above, while taken from an AMC-15 transponder, has info about a transponder on the 110 satellite.
It's interesting info, but this info isn't really even visible to the user of a Fortec receiver anyway.... so I really don't see why this network scan would give any advantage over the transponder scan.... unless the transponder scan also ignores updates to other info, besides the NIT info.

[reho33]

D** used to have (or still has) some local CH on that bird(AMC15) This was part of the super dish 105 pack. Someone told me that they are moving those channels to another bird. The network information probably links that bird to the other (110) so that the DN receiver "knows" where to retreve channel information from. Just a guess.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by reho33

D** used to have (or still has) some local CH on that bird(AMC15) This was part of the super dish 105 pack. Someone told me that they are moving those channels to another bird. The network information probably links that bird to the other (110) so that the DN receiver "knows" where to retreve channel information from. Just a guess.

From what I've seen, it looks like a complete listing of ALL dishnet sats.
There's a LOT of information there. I was looking at it in TSREADER, and did an EXPORT to an HTML file. It's a HUGE file, mainly because of the EIT, which seems to be the programming info that goes into the GUIDE. I'm in the process of uploading that file to the web now, but I'm working from a dialup, so that takes a while, so I'm typing slow while it uploads. It's really interesting to see all the info they put in their service. A regular sat channel, like one of the PBS channels, etc, don't have near that much info.
And yes, they did move a lot of the channels off AMC15, and also several off the Echo9 sat. My neighbors subscribe to Dishnet, and they were on vacation when the move occurred, and they couldn't get their local channels for a while, until the receiver got updated to the info that those channels were no longer on Echo9.
OK, computer just beeped at me.... file is at:
http://wejones.ftdata.com/echotest.htm
This was from 11740 on AMC15. The first thing you see is the PAT, then the PMT and CAT, and after that comes the NIT . Later in the file, comes the EIT, which has LOTS of info. But the point is, it seems to me like they have info there on ALL the dishnet satellites, not just the one being downlinked.