Hills HSM075 STB

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ArnoldGoat

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Topic # 13365 6-May-2007 19:43

Got one of these things yesterday. The setup was remarkably easy (I hooked it into the old SKY dish). I played with the Menu and settings for a while, and suddenly it stopped responding to the remote, though the channel up-down on the box itself
worked OK. Powering off the box (in case it was the receiver), and removing the remote's batteries had no effect.

Went to bed in disgust. This morning, it seemed to have mended itself, but I took it back to Dick Smith (in case it had an intermittent fault) for a replacement.

The same thing has happened with the new box! I wonder if it will mend itself overnight again?

I am disappointed to see that although the box can receive 4000 channels (a bit of overkill since only 5 are broadcast!), you can only set 4 programmes in the timer. Not even enough for a week of Shortland Street!

I see the box has an RJ11 jack for connecting a remote IR, or a cable to a PC to download updates. This implies that if you knew what to squirt down the line, you could do a more sensible programming job from a PC. Does anyone have any idea where you can find out details of the protocol used?

I haven't tried Hills yet. There is no mention of the box on their website. Is it a badge-engineered job from somewhere else? I thought Hills made rotary washing lines and aerials? I didn't know they ran to electronics.

ArnoldGoat

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Reply # 69789 7-May-2007 10:33

I checked operation of remote again late last night. In fact, it would operate if held about 2cm from receiver. This normally signifies low battery, but the voltage was still 3V.

This morning it had recovered again so that the remote works 2m away. Better not press too many buttons, I suppose.

Reported it to Hills. Will re-post here if I get a sensible reply.

ArnoldGoat

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Reply # 72257 25-May-2007 20:54

Someone must be buying these boxes. Am I the only one to have this problem?

MLRS

1 post

Wannabe Geek

Reply # 72266 26-May-2007 01:05

I've been involved with development and testing of the HSM075, and
have had one on the desk in my office for some months. But in that
time, I haven't seen any problems of the kind you describe. I suppose
there could have been a bad batch of remote controls, but in that
case, it seems likely that more people should have contacted Hills about it.

Just now, I tried to reproduce the problem, but the remote control
worked fine at a distance of up to 5 m for me, even after a few hundred
random mashings at the keys.

Have you checked if it makes any difference which lamps or other light
sources are switched on in the vicinity of the box? (Some types of
lamps can send out a lot of noise in the IR spectrum, which can cause
problems with IR reception.)

(Also, side note about the "4000 channels" bit. The HSM075 isn't
limited to receiving just Freeview channels. If you have a second dish
(or a dual LNB) and a DiSEqC switch, you can receive channels from
other satellites as well.)

bbjnz

45 posts

Geek

Reply # 73209 2-Jun-2007 09:24

Haven't used Geekzone before so hope I am using correctly.

Also bought a HSM075 and I am trying to install myself.

Looked all very easy and have hooked up ok. Manual easy to understand. Getting Signal Strength at about 95% but no Signal Quality. Is the signal stength coming off the satellite or only from the receiver? Any ideas what to look at next. Would it be to do with elevation or azimuth of dish? (How do I change USA flag to NZ flag?)

cyril7

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Reply # 73233 2-Jun-2007 14:58

Signal quality is what you achieve in the last 3-4dB of peaking the dish up. This includes having the LNB Skew correct. Who installed your dish?, is it an old Sky one, if the LNB is a real old CalAmp one it may be faulty and yes you still could get good signal streght but no quality.

I assume you are scanning the correct transponders, ie 12483MHz and 12456MHz both Horizontal and you have the LNB frequency settting correct, there are two common ones, 11300MHz and 10750MHz. Also if the symbol rate is wrong you will get no quality but good signal strenght, this should be 22500ksym/s.

Cyril

ArnoldGoat

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Reply # 73242 2-Jun-2007 15:38

Thanks MLRS for the suggestion, but the nearby lamp made no difference.
I will try re-locating the box away from the DVD/HDD recorder it is sitting on to see if that is interfering.

Otherwise it is behaving as per my first post.

bbjnz

45 posts

Geek

Reply # 73287 3-Jun-2007 09:31

Cyril

Thanks for info. I was doing the installation myself with new equipment. The dish was a display stock from Dick Smith and already assembled. I realised from your comments that I had not adjusted the LNB skew. I did that and got perfect picture.

Thanks

BBJ

cyril7

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Reply # 73289 3-Jun-2007 09:55

No worries, obviously you will have noted that as you approach the very peak the signal level has a widish peak where as the Quality has a much sharper peak, so the final adjustment of dish alignment and skew should have you just peaking the quality.

Signal quality is a direct gas gauge measure of C/N or BER, there are several ways it can be derived, normally a low rate BER stream is sent, or the decoder derives how hard the FEC Viterbi decoder is working (ie what rate of soft decisions its making). Essentially it is telling you info that simple signal level cannot show.

Whilst it is possible to adjust skew by just peaking quality it may not be accurate enough in a mix pol environment. With both FreeViews muxs they sit out on their own with no others about therefore you will not see any errors due to having the skew exactly right. To do a correct Skew adjustment you require either a spec analyser or a level meter that lets you see low level clearly. You then perform a cross polarity null, ie you tune to a transponder then switch to the opposite polarity and adjust skew for a null. Normally the level meter on a STB is too vague and will bottom out before you can clearly see the null. The nulling using cross pol will have a quite sharp function, compared to trying to peak when on correct polarity.

Another method that will work quite well at the moment is to tune to Skys transponder at 12519. There are infact two transponders there one on Hpol and the other on Vpol, attempt to peak the quality on each of these, this will get a more accurate skew setting than when just one polarity transmission is present. One pol will always be better than the other as I suspect the Tx level on the uplink is differnent by a db or two.

Once Sky moves to Hpol (as FreeView is) then just doing a simple quality peak is fine as there will be no cross pol transmisssions to deal with that will require exact skew alignment. That said as FreeViews transponders have no close neighbouring Vpol transponders about them just peaking quality will be more than adequate, both now and in the future.

Cyril