ATSC Tuners in Satellite or Cable Receivers

[poutanen]

I had a problem with my SV8000 and ended up having to change the C10 cap. There are lots of writeups available for the fix. My caps weren't visibly damaged, but changing them brought it back to life...

[lmlandry]

There are a lot of sites reporting this fix, many suggested replacing more than one Capacitor, especially C10 & C24.
Replacing C10 alone was successful for my unit.
I wasn't able to find one locally. I pulled one out of an old PC power supply.
I just ordered a remote for it and plan to do some recording with the built in PVR.

Thanks for the help

[poutanen]

Good to hear it worked! I changed my C10 and C24 with some replacements from sayal in Burlington (about $1 each). Worked like a charm.

[lmlandry]

This Sonicview has PVR functionality with an external hard drive.
I have searched for information on brands that work with this unit. It seems that my 500GB Western Digital Passport Essential Elite is not compatible. It is the portable kind that powers through the USB. I have tried it and the receiver does not recognize it. The volume is half full with MPEG4 movies and backup of My Documents Files.
I have successfully transferred and watched one of the movies to a 4GB thumb drive. I need a drive with more storage for HD recording.
The Sonicview documentation recommends units with their own power 300 to 500GB.
I searched the net and found a list of workable ones with both power types. Some have listed this drive as successful.
I am willing to reformat this drive if someone could verify they have proven success with this particular drive.
There is automatic backup software that may be causing the problem. Once I get the drive recognized it could have automatic sleep mode. This is not confirmed. This could also affect recording.
I am willing to buy another hard drive, but would like to give this one a shot first.
Any tips would be welcome

[stampeder]

taxtwit, check out this Bell sub-forum for threads about using their receivers for OTA:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=58

[taxtwit]

I know about the ATSC capabilities of various Bell receivers - my queries were more basic, i.e. can you split a OTA signal to feed more than one OTA tuner and can an OTA signal share a cable with a sat signal using diplexers, etc.

[stampeder]

Yes and yes. Those answers can be found in the OTA FAQ and existing threads in this forum, particularly the following thread in which you'll find some diagrams I did a few years ago about diplexers: Splitters, Attenuators, Filters, Diplexers, Other Signal Gear

[poutanen]

Just my own $0.02 here. I bought a "SimpleTech" 1 GB external USB drive and used it with success with my SV-HD8000. It does take longer to read when entering the recorded shows menu than a flash drive or possibly a smaller hard drive, but it worked.

Just a note that the SV-HD8000 records shows in *.mts format, which is easily combinable and remuxed into *.m2ts format files which are playable on the PS3 or many other machines.

[poutanen]

Here's a brief rundown of the capacitor issue and fix for the Sonicview HD8000 receiver. This issue has popped up with various symptoms for different people, but they usually result in some level of not being able to power up the receiver (mine was stuck on "loading"), and some lights on the front, my unit also wouldn't power off from the "loading" screen unless I shut the main switch off at the back.

1) Doing this will void any warranty you may have left. It also may not fix your problem, so I take no responsibility for anything you do to your receiver after reading this.

2) Turn off and unplug your receiver. Turn it back on while unplugged to hopefully drain some of the caps. Assume the caps still have residual voltage in them when handling the board.

3) Open up your receiver and remove the Power Supply board. If you need help figuing this part out, you probably shouldn't try this fix. It's the board with the power cable feeding into it, transformer on it, etc.

4) Remove the C10 and C24 caps, observing the polarity of the caps being removed. I believe they are 1000 uF electrolytic caps somewhere around 12V. We are going to replace these with 1000 uF electrolytic 35V caps. These are standard caps available at almost any electronics store (Sayal, Active Surplus, Radio Shack, the source) (Radio Shack Part # 272-1032)

5) Solder in the replacement caps in the correct polarity, and clip the excess lead length. Note that the higher voltage caps may be a little larger in diameter, this is not an issue just shift them to get to fit. Also if you can't find 35V caps you can buy higher voltage caps as long as they are 1000 uF and physically fit. The higher voltage is just what the caps are rated to handle, the originals were rated too low for the voltages applied to them.

6) Reinstall PS board into receiver and test the unit...

Again, this worked for me and many others, but it may not fix your problem. Good luck!

[lmlandry]

Great tutorial poutanen.

If you can ever find one of these on the cheap the fix is easy. You will have a fantastic OTA pvr like I have.

I was able to get my Western Digital hard drive to work, now that my remote arrived.
The trick was to use the built in drive software to disable WD Smartware. Windows will not see the partition although it still exists. Apparantly this software resides on a separate chip in the drive and cannot be removed.
The Sonicview will not be able to scan or format from the receiver's menu, but this is not required you can do it on your computer. The PVR function works, reads the drive and stores files successfully.

[theboyk]

This weekend I moved my CM4221HD onto the roof of my house (higher than previous location, better line-of-site, etc.) and my reception has improved greatly. I now get 19 strong signals from downtown Toronto. I had been using my LG 42" LCD for receiving OTA (bought in 2008), but last night I decided to hook up the antenna to my Bell 9242 to see what I could get (not sure why I never tried this in the past).

First off, I was shocked by how much better the 9242 looked vs the LG internal tuner! Stations, like CBC or WUTV, which I was getting somewhere between "normal" and "good" on the LG, I now get 100% lock on the 9242. and on top of that, I also picked up 4 additional stations on the 9242 which I could never get on the LG:

4.1 - WIVB
7.1 - WKBW
49.1 - WNYO
49.2 - CoolTV

And all 4 come through at at least 75%.

So, I never really thought much about tuner sensitivity before, but now I do. And now, I'm not going to be using the 9242 for much longer (we cancelled our Bell TV as OTA is by far a good enough replacement for us), and while I own the 9242 it's not as good as a dedicated tuner/dvr combo (so I'm going to sell it).

[distox]

I have an update on my previously mentioned black screen with no audio with CFCF 12. I am using the tuner in my Bell 9200. When I first select CFCF in the guide, I think it is 012.1, I get a black screen. However, if I press pause (9200=PVR) and then play, I get a perfect picture and DD5.1 audio. If I change the channel and go back, it's black again and I press pause/play to get the picture. Works every time.

[BamBamtheSailor]

I recently bought a SV-8000-HD-Ver2 and am having no results scanning for OTA channels. I have uploaded the firmware to the latest found on www.sonicviewusa.com. I have tried using 6 consecutive start frequencies with no success. The scan frequency width remains constant at 6000. (Couldn't try previous post regarding scanning instruction for unit). I am wondering if I should be using a different firmware that is not available on the previously mentionned website. If so, where would I find it. Using my CM-7000 I can receive 23 channels downconverted to 480p. I bought the unit to have the ability to view 1080i channels as broadcasted and use the unit as PVR. The antenna is a DB8 and is run with a RG6 (no preamp). Location: Ajax, ON, Canada.

Thanks,

[poutanen]

I owned an SV8000 as my first OTA tuner other than the TV and it worked quite well...

- Is the cable running into the right input on the box? There's an ATSC input
- Scan width does remain at 6000 hz, that's the width of each channel.
- can you reflash the box with factory firmware and try it?
- Did you take out the CM tuner and put the SV in it's place with no other changes? Otherwise you could have a cable/distribution system problem...

My Samsung TVs tuners were the strongest I've used, followed by the SV, and the Hauppauge tuners in my HTPC are actually weakest!

[BamBamtheSailor]

I found later version firmwares in free FTA forums that allowed OTA channels to be received with the SV-8000HD. I was disappointed that the factory firmware, same as that found on the manufacturer websites did not allow any OTA channels to be received (something I took for granted).

I was further disappointed with its OTA reception results; SV-8000 only captured 11 while the CM-7000 captured 23 (sometimes 26) sub-channels. Given this experience, I take away that tuner sensitivity can make a difference with respect to OTA reception.

Is there a forum thread or web page that rates/tests STBs based on their ATSC effectiveness? I've been searching and haven't found much as of yet. There is a enough info about pre-amplifier noise levels and antenna dB plots; however, I was not able to find anything about STB ATSC tuner noise specifications/test results.

Given that the overall SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio) of a system is typically affected by the NF (Noise Figure) of the first amplifier in series, does that mean I should be purchasing a pre-amplifier with a very low noise figure to try to achieve a better reception or should I just try to find a different STB?

Has anyone tried swapping ATSC tuners in STBs or TVs with success? I thought they were tied to the processor.