Getting rid of French system

BonnieCat

BonnieCat

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Hi Knowledable People

My Burstner van which I bought in the Netherlands originally came from France. The van has a TV connected to a Digital Search Box (French company) and this in turn is connected to the satellite dish on the van roof. I have the option of selecting several satellites from the search box and when pressing the search button the dish spins around trying to locate the satellite.
This search box only seems to be picking up French channels and as they are locked anyway it’s pretty useless. The TV does play DVDs so that’s something.
so my question is, is there a 12v English equivalent of the search box which picks up Freesat and which tells the dish to search. I don’t to replace the whole system if I can just replace the box.
many thanks in advance
DF0FEDDC-39D5-4CB0-8F21-413F22C28481.jpeg
 
Have you tried aligning to the Astra 28 option and retuning (search) for channels?
It may be that the previous owner removed non-French channels from the searched list. We did similar but the other way around.
 
Which ever one I try the TV keeps showing the same list of locked French channels. Also there seems to be some of Network card plugged into the TV???
 
Greetings peeps welcome from West Kent.

The answer will appear soon.
 
It might need retuning as satellite frequencies change from time to time. You might have to have it reprogrammed, but often you can download the info to do it yourself

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So I took the card out of the TV, thinking this was overriding the satellite. Did a rescan and no matter what I try it seems stuck on Atlantic Bird and the same locked French TV channels???
 
zen-rad.com seem to be the distributors. May be worth an email.
As Mr B says it could just need an updated or UK version of the software.
 
BonnieCat said:
So I took the card out of the TV, thinking this was overriding the satellite. Did a rescan and no matter what I try it seems stuck on Atlantic Bird and the same locked French TV channels???
Click to expand...
Are you using the "SAT up and down buttons" to change the satellite to Astra 28 before retuning?
From your picture it seems to be sitting on Hotbird (#3).
 
Yes I’ve changed satellite by moving up and down to the Astra satellites and then doing the scan/retune. After doing the scan it doesn’t find any channels it can access
 
We have a Burstner too, bought new in France with a sat box only picking up French TV.
Ours is a SRmecatronic sat dish and receiver, with a separate ( Servimat) décoder with a TNT decoder card inserted. We were only able to pick up French TV on Astra 19 ( no option for 28)
So, a question first. Can you select Astra 28 (no 4) on your sat selector box?
If so, and you still only pick up French channels, it may be that the TV will only pick up French channels as it has a decoder built in.
Can you try another TV, that will prove if the TV is the problem.
If it then works, you will need to swap tv’s and retune the TV to pick up Astra 28.
We sorted ours by using an SRmecatronic digital satellite selector that enables us to choose any one of 15 satellites. the Servimat decoder ia bypassed but we keep it in case ( god forbid) we should ever want to watch French TV!

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BonnieCat said:
Yes I’ve changed satellite by moving up and down to the Astra satellites and then doing the scan/retune. After doing the scan it doesn’t find any channels it can access
Click to expand...
Probably a silly question but does the dish move to a new position when you select a new satellite?
 
So on the zen-rad.com site they have a tool you can download which I did to my laptop. I connected my laptop to the box via a USB connector and did an update. You can also go into advanced settings and set a default satellite which I did. I made the Astra 2 28 degrees as the default, but annoyingly still the TV still keeps showing the locked French channels. When doing a retune after, the TV still keeps showing Atlantic Bird as the satellite so I’m suspecting the TV might be the cause but can’t confirm this as I havent been able to connect a different TV to the box. I do have a TV I can use but it’s in my bedroom and is a bit heavy to cart downstairs.
The tool looks like you can do quite a lot of resetting but I’m not familiar with a lot of it at the moment.
But I’m not giving up just yet, I will try to get the other TV downstairs and connected up to the box. The satellite does look to be pointing in the right direction as it’s the same position (as far as I can tell) as my house satellite And it does lock on to it.
it does look like the TV is the culprit here doesn’t it?”
 
BonnieCat said:
it does look like the TV is the culprit here doesn’t it?”
Click to expand...
The box shown in your original post is solely to position the sat dish to the selected satellite.
Your TV will contain the sat receiver \ tuner (unless you have a separate sat receiver \ tuner) and you there may be a setting to change the channels it tunes to.
If there isn't you would have to get an external receiver \ tuner and use the French TV as a "monitor" only assuming it has connections for this (HDMI \ RAC sockets \ etc). BTW your alternative TV would have to have an inbuilt sat receiver \ tuner (guess it does as you say you've got a sat dish at home).
 
For home I have a little box that the satellite plugs into. It says Humax Freesat on it. But I think you’ve hit the nail on the head And I think I understand it now. That French TV had a satellite card inserted in the side. I took that out but of course it made no difference. The TV must have equivalent of the Freesat box inside it. It must be hard coded or something because you cannot change the satellite input. I do have a spare Freesat box which I could try but of course it’s not 12v but just to test this out.
Connect From the satellite search box to the Freesat box and then to the TV. But I think I’m going to have to eventually get a 12v TV and tuner or tuner combined.
Thanks for all the ideas and suggestions. It’s really helping

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BonnieCat said:
Connect From the satellite search box to the Freesat box and then to the TV. But I think I’m going to have to eventually get a 12v TV and tuner or tuner combined.
Click to expand...
Yip, that's the way to connect it all up.
We use a Manhattan SX receiver that can use either 230v or 12v. Wonder if your Humax has an external transformer that reduces the 230v to 12v like ours?
There any number of threads on TVs on the forum. Just use the search box at the right of the blue bar at the top.
 
Gellyneck said:
Yip, that's the way to connect it all up.
We use a Manhattan SX receiver that can use either 230v or 12v. Wonder if your Humax has an external transformer that reduces the 230v to 12v like ours?
There any number of threads on TVs on the forum. Just use the search box at the right of the blue bar at the top.
Click to expand...
Thanks Gellyneck.
more figuring out tomorrow.
 
Success. Thanks to you guys pointing me in the right direction.

I connected the satellite cable from the search box to the Freesat box and then used an HDMI cable from the Freesat box to the TV. Changed the TV source to HDMI and it worked straight away. That’s BBC1 on the TV. Very chuffed with myself.
Eventually I may get a smaller Freesat box which will fit behind the TV but for now it’s ok.
IMG_20200316_095324021.jpg
 
BonnieCat said:
Success. Thanks to you guys pointing me in the right direction.

I connected the satellite cable from the search box to the Freesat box and then used an HDMI cable from the Freesat box to the TV. Changed the TV source to HDMI and it worked straight away. That’s BBC1 on the TV. Very chuffed with myself.
Eventually I may get a smaller Freesat box which will fit behind the TV but for now it’s ok.
View attachment 369534
Click to expand...
Does your TV have a decoder built in? It will say "Sat" or "DVBS" If you look on your remote it will probably say "Source" or "input"
 
eddievanbitz said:
Does your TV have a decoder built in? It will say "Sat" or "DVBS" If you look on your remote it will probably say "Source" or "input"
Click to expand...
yes I think so. There is a source button on the remote and that where I selected HDMI

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In which case connect the sat lead you used to connect the Humax box to the TV and you will get FTA (Free To Air) on you TV and you can leave the Humax box in the house!
 
eddievanbitz said:
In which case connect the sat lead you used to connect the Humax box to the TV and you will get FTA (Free To Air) on you TV and you can leave the Humax box in the house!
Click to expand...
No, that’s how it was originally. With the satellite cable in the TV it didn’t want to bypass the TVs decoder. I tried several settings without success. The setup now is working the only thing is that the Freesat box has to be plugged into the 240v socket behind the TV. The Freesat box is actually 12v so it may be possible to buy a connector to plug it into the 12v socket also behind the TV. It’s not too much of a problem as I’ll only be using the TV on mains hookup anyway. Perhaps in the future I’ll buy a TV with combined Freesat now I know the satellite search box is working correctly.
Cheers
 
BonnieCat said:
No, that’s how it was originally. With the satellite cable in the TV it didn’t want to bypass the TVs decoder. I tried several settings without success. The setup now is working the only thing is that the Freesat box has to be plugged into the 240v socket behind the TV. The Freesat box is actually 12v so it may be possible to buy a connector to plug it into the 12v socket also behind the TV. It’s not too much of a problem as I’ll only be using the TV on mains hookup anyway. Perhaps in the future I’ll buy a TV with combined Freesat now I know the satellite search box is working correctly.
Cheers
Click to expand...
It will work ;) (so long as the TV has a decoder built in) You will need to go to the set up menu when on "Sat" and change the satellite to Astra 28 (Astra2)

The system is working on the Humax so it is just changing the setting

If your in our area, pop in and we will do it for you if your stuck (y)
 
I use a Humax HB1000s on 12volt, had to buy a lead because I didn’t want to chop the original one.
 
eddievanbitz said:
It will work ;) (so long as the TV has a decoder built in) You will need to go to the set up menu when on "Sat" and change the satellite to Astra 28 (Astra2)

The system is working on the Humax so it is just changing the setting

If your in our area, pop in and we will do it for you if your stuck (y)
Click to expand...
Very kind of you but I live in the Netherlands.
it’s very doubtful I’ll be down your way anytime soon but thanks anyway. I’m sure you’re probably right about the TV. I did change it to Astra 28, but then when I tried to get it to scan and collect the channel list it kept complaining about needing Atlantic Bird. I tried several other settings without success and thats why I went for plan B. (My current working system)
The silly thing is I don’t really watch that much TV and manage quite well with my iPad and mifi router to watch Netflix etc It was just a technical challenge which had been bugging me since I got the van last year.

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Ah that is a long way. When you say "I did change it" I suspect that you mean the Satellite box, and then tried a channel search on the TV. The only reason that is asked for Atlantic Bird, is that Atlantic Bird will be the "selected" satellite in the TV set up menu for satellite TV

In the same way that if you selected Atlantic on the Digital Search Box which is Sat number one in the picture you posted and asked the TV to do a channel search, it would populate the list with channels that are on Atlantic Bird.

So if you change the satellite that your dish is pointing at, you have to change the setting in the TV as well
 
What I did was to go to the settings on search box and make Astra 28 the default (number 4 on the box). Then I went to the TV and selected First Time setup. Here I could choose the language and other things. It asked which country I was in and I selected UK. Then I was able to change the satellite to Astra 28 and at this point I was sure it was going to work. However when trying to pull in the channel list, I got an error message saying it needed Atlantic Bird which was a surprise. At this point on clicking ok on the error message, it threw me right back out and I had to go through the first time setup all over again. If I selected NL as the country then it wanted to use Canaal Plus which I knew wouldn’t work because this is a Dutch paid satellite service using a card you slotted into the TV and not what i wanted. I must have gone through the First time setup on the TV about 8 times before I gave up last night.
 
You wouldn't need to do the first time setup to swap between satellites as a lot of people will switch between satellites as a normal course of viewing.

What make TV do you have?
 
It’s says MobileTV on the front. Which I suspect is just a cheap generic make and the model number is MTV20DVD/SAT
Amazingly I do have the user guide and there is an English section.
i can scan the setup pages (2) if you’re interested and send them to you.

ps. I just looked on line and they are still making these TVs. They are 375 euros, so not so cheap:whatthe:
 
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BonnieCat well done getting it sorted. At least you know the TV \ sat controller \ sat receiver all work.(y)(y)
As Eddie says now you can try and "fine tune" (no pun intended!) the set-up.

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