[1953]

Do you recommend running the SAT & OTA antenna coax cables into a power conditioner (Panamax M4300-PM) then from the power conditioner to the HD-DVR (HR24) & AM21N?

DirecTV says no.

What is your recommendation?

 

[RunnerFL]

You don't want to do it with SAT. Never heard about OTA.

 

[1953]

You don't want to do it with SAT. Never heard about OTA.

Thanks for your quick response. Please help me better understand your recommendation. DTV would not explain.

 

[Davenlr]

Sat units are already run through one on the outside of your house, and grounded to your electrical ground. Much better location than INSIDE your house using the house wiring as its path to ground.

FWIW, your OTA antenna should be ground blocked OUTSIDE as well, before the coax enters your house.

 

[veryoldschool]

Do you recommend running the SAT & OTA antenna coax cables into a power conditioner (Panamax M4300-PM) then from the power conditioner to the HD-DVR (HR24) & AM21N?

DirecTV says no.

What is your recommendation?

DirecTV is correct [for once :lol:]
There is no "conditioning" needed.
This is needed/useful more for wires coming off the utility poles.
Basically it will do no good and can cause problems as they aren't made for the frequencies from the dish.

 

[jimmie57]

Thanks for your quick response. Please help me better understand your recommendation. DTV would not explain.

About 18-24 months ago I had a long running battle with the techs on the DirecTV Forum about the use of surge suppressors. I have a Monster Cable Power Center, not your typical surge suppressor. I have had zero problems. I have had them ( I have 2 set ups in the house with them on them and they are connected to the same dish) shut each system down at the exact same second and nothing else in the house even flickered. I suspected it was static coming down the cables from the dish. This happens at least 4 times a year in clear weather.

I called DirecTV and emailed them many times over this.

I got a technical person to call me on the phone and email me their decision since I was having such a battle with the techs. I posted their decision email on that forum as I had told the techs I would do when I received an answer.

Their bottom line was that
1. Every connector in the line is a possible / probable cause for a bad connection and there sure are a lot of problems caused by bad connectors / connections.

2. The majority of the Surge Suppressors will not pass the high frequency and DC voltage that is required to run the HD signals.

As it stands they do not recommend them be used in the coax lines.

Indeed a poster on the DirecTV Forum was having a problem with his signal on his brand new HR34 just this week. The tech found that his Panamax, ?? not sure of the brand, surge suppressor he had installed himself was not allowing the signal to pass thru it correctly. They bypassed it and connected directly to the receiver and his signal problem went away.
link: http://forums.directv.com/pe/action...PostID=11033531&channelID=1&portalPageId=1002

Yes, I still use mine as I have had zero problems for 3 years now.

 

[veryoldschool]

I suspected it was static coming down the cables from the dish. This happens at least 4 times a year in clear weather.

Yes, I still use mine as I have had zero problems for 3 years now.

Any static would be drained through a good ground block.

Your power conditioner may be of more help on the AC power side to your receiver, but I've read where even there some have had problems.

Glad yours isn't giving you problems with your SAT feed, but would guess there are easier ways to do what you needed.

 

[jimmie57]

Any static would be drained through a good ground block.

Your power conditioner may be of more help on the AC power side to your receiver, but I've read where even there some have had problems.

Glad yours isn't giving you problems with your SAT feed, but would guess there are easier ways to do what you needed.

I have all of the AC power being used in the systems plugged into them also. The TV, DVR, Yamaha, DVD player, Sub Woofers and a small digital clock without battery back up so I can see them flashing and know that they have shut down and restarted.

Normally I would have never bought something that is as expensive as they were, originally. They were last years models when I bought them and the seller had a bunch of them and I got them for about a third of what the suggested price of them was at the time.

 

[veryoldschool]

I have all of the AC power being used in the systems plugged into them also. The TV, DVR, Yamaha, DVD player, Sub Woofers and a small digital clock without battery back up so I can see them flashing and know that they have shut down and restarted.

Normally I would have never bought something that is as expensive as they were, originally. They were last years models when I bought them and the seller had a bunch of them and I got them for about a third of what the suggested price of them was at the time.

Anything "Monster", normally starts with an outrageous price, so glad you got a deal.
Cleaning the AC power can be a good thing, but the dish to receiver line just doesn't have the same need. Static buildup is a known problem that "I've heard" causes pops as it discharges, but my crap is grounded, so I've never had it.

 

[jimmie57]

Anything "Monster", normally starts with an outrageous price, so glad you got a deal.
Cleaning the AC power can be a good thing, but the dish to receiver line just doesn't have the same need. Static buildup is a known problem that "I've heard" causes pops as it discharges, but my crap is grounded, so I've never had it.

Yes, mine is grounded. The first tech did not ground it and made a mess. I called and talked to his super. He sent a second tech that was appalled at what he saw. He had installed the dish with no ground block and no mono pole braces at all and the cables were just flapping in the breeze on the side of the house. They took pics of it and that first guy no longer works for them.
The second guy did a good job. He grounded it to the electrical box where my
Air Conditioner gets it's power from so it is on the same ground as the rest of the house. Otherwise he said it would create a Ground Loop of some kind.

There was a guy yesterday on the DirecTV forum that posted that his system had a static discharge from the dish that fried 3 DVRs and all 3 HD TVs. It was determined that the ground had corroded and became useless that was the cause. The weather was clear at the time it did it.

 

[jimmie57]

Do you recommend running the SAT & OTA antenna coax cables into a power conditioner (Panamax M4300-PM) then from the power conditioner to the HD-DVR (HR24) & AM21N?

DirecTV says no.

What is your recommendation?

The specs on that Panamax should work as far as the signal being allowed thru and the DC voltage allowed thru.

Pasted from a web site with the specs listed.
Universal Coax Protection

Shielded Yes

Insertion Loss < 0.5 dB

HD 1080 i/p Ready Yes

Frequency Range 0 MHz - 2.2 GHz

Connections Female "F", Gold Plated

Clamping Level 75V

Bidirectional Yes

If you are like me and insist that I am going to use it,
I suggest that you read your satellite signal strengths for all satellites and write them down with the Coax running directly to the DVR.

Then hook them up thru your Panamax and read the signals again. If they did not go down any then you should be OK. If they go down any at all, reconnect straight to the DVR as there is a problem.

 

[1953]

The specs on that Panamax should work as far as the signal being allowed thru and the DC voltage allowed thru.

Pasted from a web site with the specs listed.
Universal Coax Protection

Shielded Yes

Insertion Loss < 0.5 dB

HD 1080 i/p Ready Yes

Frequency Range 0 MHz - 2.2 GHz

Connections Female "F", Gold Plated

Clamping Level 75V

Bidirectional Yes

If you are like me and insist that I am going to use it,
I suggest that you read your satellite signal strengths for all satellites and write them down with the Coax running directly to the DVR.

Then hook them up thru your Panamax and read the signals again. If they did not go down any then you should be OK. If they go down any at all, reconnect straight to the DVR as there is a problem.

Thank you for your very thorough explanations and recommendations.

 

[ndole]

.../
Their bottom line was that
\...

.../He grounded it to the electrical box where my
Air Conditioner gets it's power from ...\

:lol:

 

[1953]

I am going to contact Panamax and DTV regarding this issue. At this point I lean towards not connecting through the Panamax.

 

[netraa]

Let's put it simply as this.

If a good service tech comes into the house, and your having issues, and he sees that the coax is plugged into anything other than the wall and the IRD/PI they are going to get bypassed.

 

[Mike Greer]

I'll never understand why people pay so much for 'surge suppressors'. Especially the ones they install on the coax leading to satellite receivers and TVs. Proper grounding is much more important and using the ground connection that the air conditioner is using is NOT proper.

Surge protectors/conditioners on the coax cables are not going to protect you from a direct lightening strike and do very little to improve but can do a lot to screw up your signal.

I put most surge protectors and line conditioners in the same category as $300 power cords in the audio world, any kind of Monster branded cable and witchcraft.

It is my humble opinion that these 'devices' do nothing more than give you some kind of false sense of security - just like the TSA does!

Ah, I feel better now...

 

[veryoldschool]

I'll never understand why people....

They lack an understanding of what is going on.
Phone lines, Cable, and power lines all share the utility poles, and run for miles "together". Things can happen that cause surges.
The coax from the dish to the house/receivers doesn't.
The dish can have static charges build from wind.
Lightning is strong enough to go wherever it wants, regardless.
A good ground is going to do all that's needed, as it will bleed off the static before it can build up, and if there is a chance, the lightning will follow the same path.
Grounding to an AC unit isn't the best solution. With the AC unit off, it will be a quiet ground, but when the AC powers up, if it is using the ground, it will put noise/voltage on the ground, which since the coax is connected to it, will then become a noisy ground with some voltage, which is counter to the idea/purpose of grounding the coax.

A surge protector on a SAT feed, is a Band-Aid for a problem you shouldn't have [if grounded correctly], or a solution for a problem that you don't have [if grounded correctly].

 

[carl6]

I suggest that you read your satellite signal strengths for all satellites and write them down with the Coax running directly to the DVR.

Then hook them up thru your Panamax and read the signals again. If they did not go down any then you should be OK. If they go down any at all, reconnect straight to the DVR as there is a problem.

This will tell you absolutely nothing. The signal strengths reflected on your satellite receiver are based on bit error rates, not an indication of rf signal level.

Let's say going straight to the receiver you have an RF level of x, and that going through the protector you have an RF level 10% lower, or only 90% of x. But in both cases, at the moment, your bit error rate is unchanged. Your indicated signal level will not change.

Now, let's say that one more percent of RF loss starts to reflect bit errors, and you see a change in signal level.

What you did by routing through the protector was to reduce your margin by 10%, even though there was no indication of that.

 

[jimmie57]

I'll never understand why people pay so much for 'surge suppressors'. Especially the ones they install on the coax leading to satellite receivers and TVs. Proper grounding is much more important and using the ground connection that the air conditioner is using is NOT proper.

Surge protectors/conditioners on the coax cables are not going to protect you from a direct lightening strike and do very little to improve but can do a lot to screw up your signal.

I put most surge protectors and line conditioners in the same category as $300 power cords in the audio world, any kind of Monster branded cable and witchcraft.

It is my humble opinion that these 'devices' do nothing more than give you some kind of false sense of security - just like the TSA does!

Ah, I feel better now...

A few years ago before the surge suppressors I lost 1 Toshiba TV, 2 Yamaha receivers ( 2 different times ) and one Sub woofer 2 times. Since installing the Surge Suppressor I have lost zero and have had many many times the power surged due to a problem with the electric company. For some reason on a clear day it is not unusual for us to lose power and it make 2 or 3 attempts to restart before we get constant power.
Watching the digital display on the Surge Suppressor I have will show as much as 139 volts when the power is restarting. 140 volts will cause th Surge suppressors to shut themselves down.

 

[jimmie57]

This will tell you absolutely nothing. The signal strengths reflected on your satellite receiver are based on bit error rates, not an indication of rf signal level.

Let's say going straight to the receiver you have an RF level of x, and that going through the protector you have an RF level 10% lower, or only 90% of x. But in both cases, at the moment, your bit error rate is unchanged. Your indicated signal level will not change.

Now, let's say that one more percent of RF loss starts to reflect bit errors, and you see a change in signal level.

What you did by routing through the protector was to reduce your margin by 10%, even though there was no indication of that.

Thanks for that explanation but it is way over my head as far as this stuff is concered.
I have a hard time accepting that the signal is lost when the unit clearly specs out to be more than the signal requires.
My units are rated to 2.8mhz and swept to 3 according to the engineer at Monster Cable. He said that basically it is as good as the cable being used and should not see any loss of signal.
I have a fantastic picture now for almost 3 years with zero problems.