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TELE-audiovision International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine
— 03-04/2013
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ful. DXers, feedhunters and
techies would definitely get
their money’s worth with the
TBS 6991. Both of the tuners
are actually blindscan-com-
patible tuners. They can iden-
tify if there’s a signal on the
current frequency and, if so,
it will automatically recognize
reception parameters such as
modulation, symbolrate and
FEC.
A blindscan is especially in-
teresting with satellites that
are used for feeds, that is,
live transmissions from mo-
bile broadcasting units. Just
like “train spotting”, it can be
quite a lot of fun receiving raw
video material. Sometimes it
could even be unedited live
transmissions like sporting
or music events and then it
could also be a news reporter
passing the time while wait-
ing for his live news broad-
casting segment. Once in a
while you’ll even catch some
entertaining bloopers. Since
these feeds are not normally
transmitted on a regular ba-
sis and typically always use
a different frequency each
time, a blindscan and a spec-
trum analysis are worth their
weight in gold. Unfortunately,
measurement equipment like
this can be prohibitive for a
normal hobbyist and that’s
why we’re so excited about
the TBS 6991. Several ap-
plications make possible near
professional quality analysis
of the frequency band for sat-
ellite TV.
TBS has provided a pro-
gram on the mini CD that
performs a blindscan that
will find every transponder
and channel on its own in a
short amount of time with-
out the use of any predefined
transponder list. After we in-
stalled this tool from the mini
CD, we wanted to try it our,
but the TBS blindscan an-
nounced rather sternly that
the available tuner is not sup-
ported. After fussing around
a little bit, we found a newer
version for the TBS 6991 on
the TBS website. After unin-
stalling the previous version
and then installing the new
version, we were able to start
the program without any er-
ror message. Unfortunately,
the scan was unable to find
any channels at all and we
couldn’t figure out why. It’s
possible that TBS has to fix
something in their software,
but this didn’t bother us at
all; it was obvious by looking
at TBS’s download site that
they are constantly at work
upgrading their drivers and
tools.
With this software we
reached an absolute DXer
high point in terms of PC
based satellite technology.
CrazyScan implements the
following functions:
• RFScan: Corresponds to a
spectrum analyzer
• BLScan: Implements a
blindscan
• IQScan: Shows the con-
stellation of the current tran-
sponder including automatic
identification of reception
parameters and streams the
transport stream to TSRead-
er (see below)
• Signalinfo: Displays infor-
mation on the received signal
What’s so special now
about the TBS 6991 with re-
spect to CrazyScan? Very
simple: while most of the TV
applications access the card
through BDA drivers, Crazy-
Scan speaks directly to the
card so that full potential of
the tuner can be used. But
to do this the tuner has to be
able to implement the neces-
sary functions and, beyond
that, CrazyScan has to sup-
port the current tuner. And
it just so happens that the
TBS 6991 tuner supports all
of the four functions men-
tioned above and is also rec-
ognized by CrazyScan. There
are relatively very few cards
that are fully supported by
CrazyScan and oddly enough
most of those cards are TBS
models…
CrazyScan is available for
The TBS 6991 with ProgDVB
