[jcciaschi]

Ok I have been racking my brain to fix this problem and have no clue where to start.

Here is the story of what has gone on.

About a month ago, we were loosing signal during light rain storms. Being that the dish has been installed for over two years and been through a hurricane and bad weather, I decided to realign the dish.

I put my wife in the house watching the signal meters, me outside with a 1/2" wrench, and we talked via cell phone. It worked great and we had 95% on two of the satellites. Awesome.

About 2 days later, I realized that I had no HD channels. OOPS!! After researching I figured out that I really needed more than two satellites.

Once again I put my wife in the house and adjusted the dish. This time was much more successful. I had signal on almost every satellite (I can't get any signal on satellites that are abbreviated with an s Ex. 99s, 103s). In the end I had about 95% for both tuners on every satellite except 1.

For some reason, satellite 99ca only had 79% signal on tuner 1 and 94% signal on tuner 2. I thought the signal was good enough so I left it. Every other satellite has both tuners with almost the same signal strength.

Then a few days later I noticed I was watching two HD channels at once (the double play) and we would sporadically see the error 771 come up. It would come and go so fast that you could not read the message (I had to see the error message 15 times before I could put together the code). Ironically, we never had any problem watching the show. There was no lag or other issues other than the message showing up and going away really fast.

I once again headed outside with the wrench and the wife inside. This time we only watched the signal strength on the 99ca satellite. I tried all three adjustments and could not get tuner one to go above 80% (tuner 2 is still at 95%). So I gave up.

Then last night happened. I had a show set to record on MTV and the entire show did not record. We got the error message that part or all of the show was lost due to signal. I have seen this in the past when a bad storm comes through, but I have never seen the entire show do this. This is the second time a show has had this issue on this channel. So I tried to duplicate the problem and here are my results:

If I go to MTV and set it to record and stay on that channel, it will record no problem.
If I go to MTV and set it to record and then go to another channel, it will record with no problem.
If I go to MTV and set it to record and then go to the Discover channel or to the SciFy channel, the tv screen will freeze, the 771 error will sporadically show up and you cant watch either channel until you stop the recording.

I assume I can find other channels that this will happen with but the three listed were all I cared to try. All the channels listed are HD.

Last night I forced the receiver to update, but that did not solve the problem.

I have a H25/500 receiver.

So here are my questions:

Why is one tuner so low on satellite 99ca and fine on all the other satellites?
Why am I having this recording issue? Is it because of the signal strength?
What trouble shooting can I do before shelling out some cash to have a tech come out?

Thanks in advance

 

[peds48]

You mentioned two tuners buy yet you have an H25 HD receiver which only has one tuner. Did you misrepresent the receiver? Or are you recording remotely to an HDDVR?

 

[carl6]

It would help a great deal if you describe to us your entire system. Type of dish (3 or 5 LNB, SWM or conventional), what type of external multiswitch (if any) you have, list all of your receivers, and how they are wired back to the dish or multiswitch, etc. The more detail the better.

 

[jcciaschi]

Hey thanx for the replies,

Sorry for the misprint, my reciever is a HR24/500

My dish is a slimline. Are the LBN's the white plastic units sticking away from the dish? If so there are three of them.

Don't know what the external multiswitch is.

We only have the one receiver (yes there is only one tv in our house).

The way it was set up a few years ago was the satellite was connected at the outside of the house where the Comcast line use to come in. From there it is distributed throughout the house. There is a SWM that is in the house next to the receiver. Here is the basic path the signal would follow from dish to tv:

Dish - outside of house where splitter is - through house wires into the SWM - into receiver - TV

Let me know if you need more detail.

 

[slice1900]

How many cables do you have coming out of the LNB, and how many do you have going into the HR24?

 

[jcciaschi]

There is one cable out of the LBN and one cable into the HR24. It has always been set up this way and worked in the past prior to me realigning the dish.

 

[peds48]

I would try to power cycle the SWM power inserter.

 

[r028806]

You need a professionally done dish alignment and likely other components serviced. The differences in signal strength between tuners is not related the alignment as such, there are other components likely with an issue, such as a cable or fitting. Without an AIM Meter and proper training, the Ka band signal is very iffy at best to line up (Ka Band is your A and B band HD signals). :righton:

 

[jcciaschi]

Last night unplugged the SWM and the H24 and left it unplugged overnight. This morning I woke up, plugged in both units, and waited. Once everything was a go, I went to MTV and started a recording and then went to the history channel with no problems (this is normal). I then went to the Discovery channel and as usual it froze and you could not see anything. The problem still exists.

Yes I could pay for them to come out and align the dish, but that is why I got on this form as I am trying to avoid that. Plus I have the dish aligned with better signal than the installer did 2 years ago (except for sat 99ca).

Yesterday I went out and disconnected the cable at the LBN, wiped it with my shirt, and put it back together. I also opened the cable box on the outside of the house and found a 4 way splitter. I again checked and cleaned the main infeed line. Obviously this didn't work as the problem is still here the following morning.

 

[retromzc]

I recently had the same problem with the same channels. Tuner 2 showed fine signal with 99ca tp18 (which is where these channels are now coming from) while tuner 1 showed much lower signal strength on the same tp. Finally gave in and called Directv. They sent out a tech who moved my dish. While things are working fine now, tuner 1 still shows lower signal strength on 99ca tp 18 than tuner 2 does. The only way I could watch the affected channels was to record one of the bad channels which seemed to force the dvr (HR24-500) to use the other tuner to watch the affected channels.

 

[jcciaschi]

I had a feeling the issue was the alignment. I might try to align it again, but my last attempt didn't work.

Can you explain how you were able to get the DVR to pick the other tuner?

 

[inkahauts]

Alignment issues won't ever cause one tuner to have significantly higher signal than another tuner in the same box on the same channel or transponder. Lnb issues and wiring and receiver issues cause that. It also doesn't cause one transponder to be bad and the rest good coming from the same sat location.

Honestly almost sounds like a bad lnb to me.

Are all ports on then4 way spotter used? Are unused ones terminated properly. (Even if it's connected to a cable to another room if it's not actually hooked tons receiver it needs to be terminated somewhere. ) in fact if your house only has one receiver I'd use only a barrel connector and make sure the lone doesn't have any other splitters anywhere. That kind of thing can causes issues including what you may be experiencing.

 

[jcciaschi]

The LBN has only one connection coming out of it. There are three other holes, but nothing to attach to. When you look in the hole there are no threads and no attachment to anything. It looks like there is no way to even attach to anything.

There is one 4-way splitter that I guess I could take out and see if it works.

Would there be any benefit to running two lines from the H24 to the splitter?

 

[Blackloz]

I'm having the same issue with my HR24. On 99ca transponder 18. Tuner 1 holds steady at 89% while tuner 2 switches between signal not locked to 80% every 5 seconds. Our HR24 & H24 are completely fine with solid signal of 89% on all tuners, so I've verified that it's not an alignment or lnb issue as it's only the HR24 that's affected. Once I have some time I'm going to check the cable going from the SWS-8 to the HR24/swap locations with the H24

 

[inkahauts]

No, the reason you probably have four lines is the old systems before swim required more wires. There is no way to run more wires from the new swim system lnbs. You are good there. Same with the dvr. You cant run more than one wire when you are setup with SWIM system. Its one wire only, the other input is totally ignored.

Definitely remove the splitter, I have a feeling its not terminated properly at the other ends of all those cables. That can cause issues. no need to have it inline either if its not being used because ti also causes some negligible signal loss, but why have it when you don't need it? I hope this is your issue, since its an easy fix.

I do assume your power inserter for the dish is near the the reciver and is hooked up inline with the coax for that receiver. If not then you'd need to move it there.

 

[jcciaschi]

The splitter was originally installed to run more lines through the house. I use to have a roommate and she had a tv so there was a need for a splitter. She is no longer here so I could definitely get rid of the splitter and hopefully increase signal a little. From the responses on here it seems this is a current problem with th H24.

The SWM is about 5 feet from the H24.

 

[peds48]

The splitter was originally installed to run more lines through the house. I use to have a roommate and she had a tv so there was a need for a splitter. She is no longer here so I could definitely get rid of the splitter and hopefully increase signal a little. From the responses on here it seems this is a current problem with th H24.

The SWM is about 5 feet from the H24.

The splitter in itself may not be the problem, the unterminated outputs might be.

 

[bflora]

There seems to be something strange going on with 99ca tp18 in general. Rather erratic problems occurring.

 

[inkahauts]

One transponder a little low is not the same thing as different tuners having different signal levels for the same transponder, and all kinds of breakup and lock ups in general. That is probably something to do with dtv, where as the breakups and such is in the persons system.