Blind Scan

[Dipper]

Many people mistakenly assume that you should never do a blind scan. This is based on the fact that alot of people are using DishPro technology and as a result are getting blind scans that consist of duplicated channels.

First, it is important to understand what DishPro does and how it differs from Legacy (or "Standard"). Each satellite has a frequency range of 500 MHz. For Dish/BEV-type satellites, your LNB receives 12200-12700 MHz. For most FTA satellites, the LNB receives 11700-12200 MHz or 3700-4200 MHz. Your LNB converts those frequencies down to the 950-1450 MHz that your receiver operates at.

If you look at the spec sheet in your receiver manual, you'll see that your receiver's input frequency is 950-2150 MHz. So in addition to the standard 950-1450 MHz band, you have a secondary 1650-2150 MHz band that is normally not used unless you have a universal LNB.

Echostar took advantage of this unused frequency band and created a technology that placed all left-hand ("horizontal") polarized frequencies in the upper band and left all right-hand ("vertical") frequencies in the lower band. All frequencies in the upper band are converted in such a way that all frequencies appear to be "vertical".

When you do a blind scan, your receiver searches everything from 12200 to 13500. First it does a horizontal sweep and then a vertical sweep. Since all transponders on a DishPro setup are on one polarity, it picks them up twice when it blind scans, hence the doubles. The way to fix this is to set your scan so that it only scans vertical. That way, it only scans one polarity and doesn't do a second sweep to pick up the same channels again.

Now, if you are not using DishPro, this is not an issue because your receiver will blind scan 12200-12700 (instead of 12200-13500) and will pick up only "horizontal" channels on one sweep and only "vertical" channels on the second. There will not be any duplicates.

So, in a nutshell, here is how you configure your settings:

If using DishPro:
LNB Type (Antenna settings menu) = OCS-DP
Polarization (Blind scan menu) = Vertical

If using Legacy:
LNB Type (Antenna settings menu) = Standard (sometimes called Single)
Polarization (Blind scan menu) = All