C4 HD Freesat

[fac13]

As you probably know, Channel 4 HD is going free-to-air on Freesat soon and is being piloted at the moment.

I had a bit of trouble working out how to tune the test channel, so I thought I'd share what I've found to maybe save others some time.

The problem is that for some reason when Sage does a full scan of my Hauppauge Nova-S2 card it doesn't find the new channel, so I used information I got from KingOfSat, and adapted it to the format used in Sage's frq file as follows: -

CH:904 onid:2 tsid:2614 sid:55300 frq:12607000 rate:27500 mod:31 pol:2 fec_rate_in:4 pilot:0 sat:0 ctrl:1 #:C4HDTest

Obviously channel 904 and "C4HDTest" can be changed to whatever you want. The difficult bit was working out what to set "mod" to. Trial and error and an old post on this forum eventually led to "31" being the correct value for a QPSK DVB-S2 channel.

Every time I've watched the test channel it has been working and perfect, I'm not sure if the details will change before the official go-live but I suspect they won't.

I'd be interested to know if anybody has any theories about why Sage doesn't see the channel when it does a scan.

[starfire]

Strange, tried that line with my Nova-S2 and no signal in Sage.

Prog-DVB scan its fine and reports properties the same as the settings from that line...

edit: got it working with
CH:103 onid:2 tsid:2614 sid:55300 frq:12606650 rate:27500 mod:30 pol:2 fec_rate_in:3 pilot:0 sat:0 ctrl:1 #:C4HDTest

Your right a Sage scan did not pick it up, will raise a bug for that

[jamesdisco]

Originally Posted by starfire

Strange, tried that line with my Nova-S2 and no signal in Sage.

Prog-DVB scan its fine and reports properties the same as the settings from that line...

edit: got it working with
CH:103 onid:2 tsid:2614 sid:55300 frq:12606650 rate:27500 mod:30 pol:2 fec_rate_in:3 pilot:0 sat:0 ctrl:1 #:C4HDTest

Your right a Sage scan did not pick it up, will raise a bug for that

Just tried it with these settings and couldnt get it to work.

[starfire]

With a Nova-S2 DVB-S2 ?

[fac13]

Originally Posted by starfire

edit: got it working with
CH:103 onid:2 tsid:2614 sid:55300 frq:12606650 rate:27500 mod:30 pol:2 fec_rate_in:3 pilot:0 sat:0 ctrl:1 #:C4HDTest

I tested your values and those work for me too. Your frequency is more accurate than mine but I've never found it to matter. The fec_rate is described elsewhere as 3/4 so maybe either value is ok. I don't know what the mod value does or how it is represented in a Sage frq file, the comments in the file header are unclear.

Perhaps the test transmision was off-air for some reason when you tried my settings? They still work for me (watching Fern as I write).

[jaminben]

What settings work to be able to tune into Channel 4HD? I've tried:

CH:103 onid:2 tsid:2614 sid:55300 frq:12606650 rate:27500 mod:30 pol:2 fec_rate_in:3 pilot:0 sat:0 ctrl:1 #:C4HDTest

And I also tried looking at King of Sat for settings but they look the same as above.... I can't get mine to work... all I get is a No Signal. All other Freesat HD channels work ok.

On a different note, does anyone know if we can use the epg provided by the Freesat Info channel to populate our epg? I'm guessing not.

[fac13]

It may not be a lot of help, but I can confirm that I'm using exactly those values, and mine is working, I just checked. Same tuner as yours but on Windows 7.

Have you got the latest driver, and have you tried the fix in the BBC HD thread, currently just below this one? Maybe C4 is S2 and that's the problem?

Edit: should have read your post properly, your other HD channels are ok, so it's unlikely to be that.

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by fac13

It may not be a lot of help, but I can confirm that I'm using exactly those values, and mine is working, I just checked. Same tuner as yours but on Windows 7.

Have you got the latest driver, and have you tried the fix in the BBC HD thread, currently just below this one? Maybe C4 is S2 and that's the problem?

Edit: should have read your post properly, your other HD channels are ok, so it's unlikely to be that.

It seems odd, I have it working in other programes ok... I'm also using Win 7 now but I doubt thats a problem. Did yours auto tune or did you manually have to enter the details?

Cheers

Ben

[fac13]

Manually.

I'm happy to be corrected but I'm pretty sure Sage doesn't detect T2 or S2 channels during scans.

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by fac13

Manually.

I'm happy to be corrected but I'm pretty sure Sage doesn't detect T2 or S2 channels during scans.

Ok, thanks

At least I know it should work so I'll keep playing with it.

Cheers

Ben

EDIT

I got it to work eventually.... I didn't do anything special apart from uninstalling Sage and reinstalling although this time it found all HD channels automatically. Bad news is that it didn't find other channels like Kix, POP Girl etc but I can live without those.

[jaminben]

So this is starting to get annoying now... how can Channel 4HD work one day but not the next? I've been running fresh scans every day and each day I seem to get different results. Sometimes Channel 4HD will work while other times it won't.... the same goes for other channels like BBC HD, ITV HD, Kix, BBC One East, POP etc.

Other programes like MediaPortal work 100% of the time with all channels.... why would Sage be any different?

Anyone had any similar expirences like this with DVB-S and the Hauppauge Nova HD S2?

Cheers

Ben

[starfire]

Not sure but not having issues myself, I would checkout this thread and make sure your Nova drivers are up to date and you have the registry patch (not that it should be needed for Channel 4 HD when I added it).

edit: looks like C4 HD is DVB-S2 so patch would be needed. other programs don't need this as they present the necessary extra tuning info to the card but Sage doesn't

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by starfire

Not sure but not having issues myself, I would checkout this thread and make sure your Nova drivers are up to date and you have the registry patch (not that it should be needed for Channel 4 HD when I added it).

edit: looks like C4 HD is DVB-S2 so patch would be needed. other programs don't need this as they present the necessary extra tuning info to the card but Sage doesn't

Ok, thanks... I'm using those drivers and already applied that patch. Still its pretty strange that it'll work in the morning and when I get home from work then stop working for no reason.

[fac13]

A long shot I admit, but are you changing the user id you use to run SageTV?

I only say this because I had all sorts of weird problems when I tried to run Sage under its own, specially created, user name which wasn't a member of the Administrators group. Windows 7 started virtualizing things because the new user couldn't write to Program Files (x86). Many files were no longer being picked up from where I expected. It was even using different registry entries from the ones I could see directly. I kept changing things to try to make it work and the only time it did was when I launched Sage directly (not as a service), which of course made it run as "me" and hence with Administrator rights.

You'd only get the intermittent failures to tune problem if you were changing the user id intermittently too of course, which is just one reason why I say this is a long shot!

[jaminben]

Its not that..... its running all the time using the administrator user/pass, thanks for the reply anyway

Over the past two days its worked fine (hope I've not talked something up).... I've not done anything special to make it work so its still weird.

[jaminben]

So Channel 4HD was working ok but when I tried it last night its not working anymore

I know Astra 1N was launched not so long ago so I went to King of Sat to check the frequencies and noticed they've changed. I changed mine to match except for 8PSK which we don't seem to have in Sage.

1. Is Channel 4 HD broken for anyone else using the old frequencies?
2. Is anyone using the new Astra 1N frequencies successfully?

I'm using a Nova HD DVB-S2 natively in Sage.

CH:304 onid:2 tsid:2068 sid:21200 frq:11127000 rate:22000 mod:30 pol:2 fec_rate_in:2 pilot:0 sat:0 ctrl:1 #:Channel 4HD

Cheers

Ben

[bunch92]

C4 HD broken for me too

i was using CH:133 onid:2 tsid:2614 sid:55300 frq:12606650 rate:27500 mod:30 pol:2 fec_rate_in:3 pilot:0 sat:0 ctrl:1 #:CHANNEL4HD

[jamesdisco]

Just checked broken for me too. I assume I'll be using the old frequencies.

[bunch92]

Fixed it , try :

CH:304 onid:2 tsid:2068 sid:21200 frq:11127000 rate:22000 mod:32 pol:2 fec_rate_in:2 sat:0 ctrl:1 #:Channel 4HD

[bunch92]

For info , modulation parameter (mod) is explained in the following table :

1:16QAM
2:32QAM
3:64QAM
4:80QAM
5:96QAM
6:112QAM
7:128QAM
8:160QAM
9:192QAM
10:224QAM,
11:256QAM
12:320QAM
13:384QAM
14:448QAM
15:512QAM
16:640QAM
17:768QAM
18:896QAM
19:1024QAM
20:QPSK
21:BPSK
22:OQPSK
23:8VSB
24:16VSB
31:NBC_QPSK
32:NBC_8PSK