Hi there,

My brother has just bought one of these. All seems well except that it will not decode nine in Sydney. Signal strength is reported as 99%. However it does decode WIN with no problems.

Any ideas? Also can anyone comment on the reception abilities as we are considering a second purchase for use in a rural location where signal strength is marginal. Previously we have tried my Tiny2 at the farm where ABC is snowy and it was picture perfect through the Tiny2.

Josh.

Does it have a signal quality reading, this is more important than signal strength, also the fact that you are picking up WIN instead of NINE suggests you are in an area where there is overlap, you may need to set the frequency manually, some boxes are like this (not familiar with your particular model)

Hi I am Evil Josh's brother.

It recieves win and Prime Wollongong fine but balks at chanel 9 syd. Yes it has a quality meter which pretty much anything below 75% causes pixelation and jumping, which is the case with C9.

SBS is also dodgie but it was marginal before on analogue.

I can see the transmission towers except for a few treees which are in the way (About 13km away). Last night I inserted a 12db attenuator into the aerial line as I thought I could be overloading the front end of the reciever, however this made it worse. I will add some amplification and post the results.

Appart from the above it is performing exceptionally on all other channels. $39.95 I am not complaining.

Shaun

Hi Shaun

Do you live nth or sth of Wollongong ? I setup a STB at Bulli which picked up the Sydney as well as Illawarra stations. Another I set up at Corrimal had a perfect view of Brokers Nose tower above Balgownie, but it appears it only transmits sth. Knights hill above Albion park gave a perfect signal.
I don't know why SBS would be marginal on Digital. It should be as good as the rest.

There is a section of the forum dedicated to local reception problems. It might be worth a read.

David

I am north of Sydney

Fixed Channel 9. The clever autosearch assigned it to real channel 33, which is Manly and the Kings X site. I simply told it to manual search on Channel 8, which is the willoughby tower I have line of site with, and hey presto it works.

Try the ACMAs post code search for the channel allocations. Be careful when printing as the shading to indicate digital transmission was lost on my printer

Evil Shaun

http://www.acma.gov.au/postcode/postcode_acma.shtml

Ok, yet another update. All working OK. I am hoping all will be OK once the sun goes down. Should be.

OK, I have reprogrammed the channels manually to look at the Willoughby / Gore hill tower. For some strange reason the auto search decided to pick the furthest away towers in each case. Anyway, I used the attached link and all is fine.

http://www.dba.org.au/index.asp?remember=0...Location=Sydney

One final thing to note is that ABC is listed as being on Channel 12, however the MTV Coles tuner thinks 12 is Channel 10 HDTV. I checked the frequency and it is in fact 13 on the manual scan = 12. So the tip is to look at the frequency rather than the channel no.

Evil Shaun

Yes the MTV unfortunately gets a bit lost with our odd digital channel numbering plan.

It doesn't recognise the existance of Ch 9A

So this is how it handles the Band 3 plan.

MTV Assigned - Centre Frequency (MHz) - ACMA assigned
6 - 177.5 - 6
7 - 184.5 - 7
8 - 191.5 - 8
9 - 198.5 - 9
10 - 205.5 - 9A
11 - 212.5 - 10
12 - 219.5 - 11
13 - 226.5 - 12

Wahroonga Farm,
The new digital band 3 frequency allocations actually match the European allocations but with different names.

European = Australian
5 = 6
6 = 7
7 = 8
8 = 9
9 = 9A
10 = 10
11 = 11
12 = 12

AlanH

glad you fixed the problem shaun.....................couldn't find any at my local coles.

just have one question.....................is the rest of the family evil or just you boys?

I would say that my brother is evil and I simply lack imagination when signing up.

Mr Wahroonga Farm. I live in Wahroonga and the second coles unit is destined for a farm just out of Gloucester. Coincidence or what?

It will be pointing at Middle brother mountain

Shaun

ps. Coles Hornsby still had some yesterday.

Lindfield and Turramurra Coles had both run out. Turramurra suggested you could ring around stores to find stock. Sale ends tomorrow.

ES

No coincidence .... here's the details

Hi, everyone.
I just got Coles STB box today. Everything seems to be fine except that the front display on the unit
shows permanently double zeros - 00. They do not change when I switch the channels.
Am I supposed to configure it somehow or the unit is faulty ?
I can't find any menu options for setting channel numbers ...

Mine shows 001 for the 'lowest channel' and steps up each time u move up a channel. I have changed the channel order.

What does it show when you just push the power button ? 001 staight away ?
Mine shows 00_, otherwise it is workiing fine. What do you mean by
"I have changed the channel order." ?
Just moving the channels up and down in the "Move" column of programs list ?

1. It comes up on the 'last ch viewed'
2. Yup.

Hello guys/girls!

I just purchases one of these MTV boxes and oddly enough the IR remote for it controls my DVD player and visa versa - VERY annoying....

Any ideas?

Apart from that I have had joy with the box - I'm in the Brisbane CBD

Cheers, C

Turn one off. Unlikely you would be watching both at the same time anyway. Otherwise i think you are stuck.

What brand is the DVD? Could help us MTV owners in the future if we can get an idea of who actually made it.

Has anyone played with the data port on the back??

ES

There must be a common IR chipset floating around. I have the same problem between my Tiny2 / Twinhan remote (for my HTPC) and my BASE DVD player remote.

Josh

Hi all,

I'm new to the world of set top boxes, so hope someone can clarify a problem I'm having with my MTV STB.

Just tried to set up the timer function, and it kinda worked, but I don't know what to put in where it says "Channel No."? For example, channel 9 could be any of:

9 -- for channel 9
004 -- which is what shows on the LCD display when I watch channel 9
8 -- which is what shows on the screen in the channel number when I am watching channel 9 and press the "i" for "information" button.

Additionally, the system seems to want me to enter 4 digits for the channel number, but the longest number I have is "004" -- three digits.

I'm confused. Help! (Please!)

Thankyou!

Heya I live in Wahroonga too. I'm in a bit of a low point though and my digital reception sucks. I get two channels 7 and 9 occasionally abc and 10 but very rarely. Just interested as to what channels you guys get? (I want to know what I'm missing out on).

All of them but as stated before I am on the top of the hill with line of sight to Willoughby tower.

ES

Hi guys, got one of these for my folks who had problems with analog 2, I think they need to spring for a decent antenna - i think someone asked who made these things, a bit of web trawling indicates they are a goldtech g-767 - hope this helps someone. Was going to get one for me but someone said the sale was over

On the hunt for a cheapy cheapy SD STB.
I came across this thread and thought $39.. what the heck.
Beats messing about on eBay etc.

So I ducked out to grab one from local Coles just now....

Price has gone up to $59 for the STB, and the DVD player.

Anyway, I only need a STB to get Ch7 and Ch10 for 2-3hrs / week for the upcoming AFL season seeing as those two dinosaur stations won't allow their precious signal on the Foxtel satellite sevice.

So I've got some time to play on eBay before that kicks off...

Just thought I'd let people know that these STB's appear to have gone up to $59 now, at least here in Melb.

Yeah, it was a last-week special. They ran the same special a couple of weeks BEFORE Christmas at Bi.Lo and now a couple of weeks AFTER Christmas at Coles, so maybe it could happen again in the future, after they're all finished with their "Back to School" specials ...

What's the remote control like on theses MTV boxes?
Someone mentioned something about a timer, why does a set top box need a timer?
I already have a PVR in the living room that has a timer to set up timer recordings, but I don't understand why a STB would have a timer.

Can you change the screen's aspect ratio between 16:9 / 4:3 letterbox / 4:3 fullscreen via a single button on the remote control, (handy for people with 4:3 TV's), or do you need to change the aspect ratio in the menu settings.

What outputs does it have?

Simple but fine. Buttons work and sensitivity ok.

You can feed video/audio into an analogue VCR.

Posted this elsewhere, but here's a brief synopsis on this unit.

MTV MSTB767

There’s no ‘aspect button’ on the MTV MSTB767’s simple remote, but it works fine with easy to press buttons and good range /sensitivity. A remote ‘aspect button’ can be a bit over rated IMHO .... when u don't have it; what you occasionally miss at the edges doesn't seem quite so relevant …. simply set it to 4:3 Pan Scan (this way the rest of the family won’t get confused by the odd screens from time to time). Don’t drop the remote on hard surfaces as it’s likely to crack!

Video options are limited with no S-video or component (1x video/audio rca only + digital audio), but excellent timers (10 off) and Sig/Qual display, plus a pretty neat installation wizard at 1st time start up (or factory re-boot) and a front panel green 'signal lock' led. The front panel red led numeric display (ugly) indicates the ‘channels list’ number (bit odd).

The 10 individual timers use the LCN (Logical Channel Number). This is viewable via the info button as the 'Program Number'. The LCN are 2 or 3 digit numbers. The other trick is to activate the timer by using the left arrow after setting the timer details. Once under timer control, the stb will prompt you if you try to change anything. The actual STB time/date is viewable via the ‘red EPG’ button. Time is set up relative to GMT in the 'System Settings'. All seems to work on a simple trial.

It appears to handle impulse noise by audio muting and screen freezing, rather than 'screeching' which is a handy feature in marginal/noisy signal areas and it correctly deals with LCN allocations. The ‘INFO’ button gives very fulsome DVD-T info and there’s a handy ‘on/off’ push button on the front panel which actually switches the AC input.

It has good auto and manual scan features with full frequency details, however the MTV MSTB767 unfortunately gets a bit lost with our odd Australian Band 3 (Ch 6-12) digital channel plan and doesn't recognise the existence of Ch 9A. Band 4 & 5 (Ch 28-69) are fine. Don’t get me wrong though, it will ‘auto scan’ everything in Band 3.

MTV Assigned - Centre Frequency (MHz) - ACMA assigned
6 - 177.5 - 6
7 - 184.5 - 7
8 - 191.5 - 8
9 - 198.5 - 9
10 - 205.5 - 9A
11 - 212.5 - 10
12 - 219.5 - 11
13 - 226.5 – 12

I guess a small price to pay, but this could be very, very confusing for someone attempting a ‘manual scan’ of channels 9A-12, which is often required in locations where there are multiple channel/transmitter choices.

So apart from the lack of enhanced video options, the odd front panel display and the Band 3 channel translation issue; everything else appears to work to specification.

All in all it’s a pretty competent, stable, small footprint box (designed for the world market), with good features vs price.

Yes, the 9A thing stumped me for a while. Lucky it has a freq. readout. My remote was dropped by the 20 month old and a few pieced of plastic are rattling around in it however it still functions. So it needs to be treated a bit gentle me thinks.

Yes the 4:3 thing is a bit anoying to change but I have just left it in letterbox and put up with it. $39.95 I can put up with a lot but have not had to with this unit. Very impressed for the price and in general.

ES

Has anyone looked behind the MTV labled panel on the front? It looks like it should open but I have applied a fair bit of force with no luck and don't want to break it?

It's a smart card slot (unpopulated), required in some markets.

This post of mine was at the end of the previous page, so just wanted to *bump* it in case someone can help me understand how to program the timer on this beastie -- the manual which came with the unit wasn't hugely useful, I'm afraid.

Thanks!

CatieB

Well CatieB, it's none of those.

It's the LCN (Logical Channel No.). This is viewable via the info button as the 'Program No.' They are 2 or 3 digit numbers. As mentioned above this box display LCN correctly.

The other trick is to activate the timer by using the left arrow after setting the timer details. Once under timer control, the stb will prompt you if you try to change anything.

The actual STB time/date is viewable via the red EPG button. Time is set up relative to GMT in the 'System Settings'.

All seems to work on a simple trial.

Lost the remote control for my MTV DST. Can I use my universal remote MST B767?
Is there a code I can use?

K-Mart have them advertised for $50. Not as Good as the $40 from Coles old special but still reasonable

ES

Coles have them on special for $49.00 so 99 cents cheeper than Kmart

Shaun

I installed the STB justy out of Gloucester and 70km from middle brother. All chanells, including Prime, are 99% signal and 99% quality. SBS dipped to 96% quality at one stage.

Brilliant box for the price.

Shaun

The sig/qual indicators on these boxes are very optimistic and I'd consider that a considerable weakness (if your interested in those things).

They seem to almost always show 100% sig/qual, but can start happily glitching at 95%. This doesn't mean it'll drop out before other boxes ...... just doesn't 'tell the whole truth'.

Masthead in cct ES?

I purchased a Kross from Woolworths in Sydney for $79 some time ago which I suspect is the same as the MTV unit and I could not get it to tune into Channel 9 from Epping which is line of site to the transmitter. I then purchased an LG 5100P HD and gave the Kross to my father in law up at Hazlebrook in the Blue Mountains. Even after re-scanning up there the Kross still cannot receive Channel 9. With the LG HD STB there was absolutely no problems in tuning all HD stations.

Cheers

Rod Gayford

Don't know the Kross box but have u done a factory reset and set it for Aus/nsw correctly?

The MTV tunes Ch8 (NINE) as 191.5MHz digital. It's actually 191.625MHz (a 125Khz shift, Artarmon Rd Willoughby) which is probably the problem.

Force it to manually scan Ch 8.

Yes a mast head amp, brand unknown. Don't know who makes the VHF antenna, I think it may have been a home brew by the antenna man. 3 or 4 elements from memory. The UHF is a quad stacked array with reflector, comercially made.

ES


I don't know the kross box either but I had to tune the MTV one manually to nine as it was tuned at every other tranmitter than the one I had it pointed at (Willoughby). It was tuned to Kings Cross and North Head giving appalling results, however NBN (9) wollongong came in fine.

Download the channel allocation for your area (link given in previous post) and try manually tuning it.

ES

Does the job well......my initial problems was to do with me not the STB.

Walked into my local Coles last weekend, low & behold a stack of MTV STB's $31.95!

I was ripped off!!! $39.95 I paid. Kidding, mine is still going strong at Wahroonga, Gloucester and another at St.Ives

Seem to be a good unit. Would have liked a aspect ratio button on the remote but I cope OK for the price

Evil Shaun

I agree. You can't go to wrong for that price!

I don't suppose anyone knows if they can still be had for that price in Melbourne? At $32 I'm all in!

I dropped into the the local Coles yesterday here in SE Queensland and the STB price there was still about $59 for the MTV.

Well, I went to my local Coles - they didn't have it; they had an HD one for $199.

I spoke to the relevant person (can't remember his title) who said that they get shipments every 4 weeks or so - it's a promotional item so they don't keep constant stock. If it runs out then that's it until the next time that it's promoted.

He also said that he had never seen them for $32 - the lowest was $39.

Coles Turramurra (Sydney) said the same thing. That is why you apparently can not 'Rain Check' them as their supply is promotional only.

ES

The MTV Stb is advertised in this weeks melbourne catalogue for $49 save $10.

From 11 June to 17 June.

May not be available at all stores.

^ yeah it was in our catalogue too.

I payed $49 dollars for mine.

I too purchased one for 49 bucks but its not picking up WinTV or GWN. I have only done the automatic search but thought that should have picked up every station. It picks up 4 ABC & 4 SBS channels but thats it..
Is there a trick to getting the machine to work properly??