ULTRA..? MAX Channels ???

[wejones]

Ran into some strange behavior today. I had done a couple blind scans with my ULTRA, and it seemed to be working OK, then I tried another blind scan on a sat where it found more than a dozen transponders, however when it started looking for channels, it came up empty, even though I know there were channels there. I went to another sat, same thing.
I was a bit confused, since I didn't think I was over the maximum number of sats, transponders, or channels, however I went in, and deleted 4 or 5 channels. Bingo, the Ultra was able to scan in channels again.
So I figured that I must be over the maximum. I checked, and I only had 1807 channels, and the maximum is supposed to be 2001. I hooked up the Gtools program, and verified that I was under the limit, both for TV (1807) , Radio (389), and for sats (58) and transponders (1086).
I thought that perhaps some memory was taken up by hidden satellites, but I only have one hidden one, and it only has a handfull of channels that I think were included in the count anyway.

Anyway, I'm confused. I'm wondering if anyone else has encountered any maximum channel number short of the advertised value? I looked through the data in Gtools, and the only unusual thing that I noticed was that all the AC3 channels had PID #s that seemed very strange. For example, a channel with an audio PID of 505 had 33273 entered, which is greater than the 8191 maximum. However for an integer, this equates to negative 505 I think, so I'm guessing that AC3 channels are just coded as negative numbers.

I guess I had long ago decided that nothing that this Ultra did strange would ever surprise me, but I had come to beleive that it only had problems when over the memory limits, but I guess not.

One thing that occurred to me, was that it might be something like a computer that needed de-fragging or something. Ie, if I had previously deleted channels,, that maybe I could be under the limit, but the Ultra isn't able to recover deleted space. Perhaps if I sort each category, to force it to re-save all the data in order????

Any ideas?

[Iceberg]

transponder overload

I have an Ultra that does the same thing and I have no where near that amount of channels in it. (maybe 400) but when I do a lot of blind scanning it will plug up the list and make the unit do some wacky things

Things to try
1. Since I dont use this for C-Band, I loaded the list on ChannelMaster and removed all C-Band satellites
2. I removed almost all the TP's on each satellite. The channels will stay even if the TP is eliminated.

That seemed to help from keeping it doing that.

[pictureon]

Originally Posted by Iceberg

2. I removed almost all the TP's on each satellite. The channels will stay even if the TP is eliminated.

Are you sure about that? I'm almost positive that if you remove a transponder, all channels under that transponder will be deleted.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by Iceberg

transponder overload

I have an Ultra that does the same thing and I have no where near that amount of channels in it. (maybe 400) but when I do a lot of blind scanning it will plug up the list and make the unit do some wacky things
...

Thanks. Yeah, I've been through the transponder overload thing before, when I had something like over 1500 transponders, ie over the 1300 maximum. But this time I'm not over the limit. Also, this isn't doing the same thing as before, ie, before all my settings were just randomly changing, while this time, nothing was changing, it just refused to save any new channels.

However new information.... After I deleted about 4 channels, and re-saved, everything seems to be OK again, which is strange. Ie after deleting 4 channels, I have since done a couple blind scans, and added another 20 or so channels.

I'm sure this is probably a memory thing...... perhaps this thing has a battery that's going bad.... and I'm sure that I'd be better off if I'd delete all my transponders and channels and start over from scratch, and in fact I've started the process already, by saving everything with Gtools, and starting a wholesale deletion process.

But my main question was whether I had hit some undocumented limit, but apparently that wasn't the case. I'm starting to think that it might be advisable to just occasionally do a sort operation on this receiver. Ie it might tend to defrag the memory.

Thanks.

[Iceberg]

Originally Posted by pictureon

Are you sure about that? I'm almost positive that if you remove a transponder, all channels under that transponder will be deleted.

yes I am sure. The Pansat 1500 doesn't and the Fortec Ultra doesn't remove channels when removing the TP's. I was cleaning out TP's on a satellite the other day and accidentally deleted the one I wanted to keep. Channel was still there

My Coolsat does that. If you delete the TP, the chanenls associated with it go too

[wejones]

Originally Posted by Iceberg

yes I am sure. The Pansat 1500 doesn't and the Fortec Ultra doesn't remove channels when removing the TP's. I was cleaning out TP's on a satellite the other day and accidentally deleted the one I wanted to keep. Channel was still there
..

I just gave this a try, and you're right. At least using the remote.

If you delete a transponder in GTOOLS, however, it takes away the channels.

[Iceberg]

Originally Posted by wejones

If you delete a transponder in GTOOLS, however, it takes away the channels.

Interesting...havent tried it in ChannelMaster yet