[dnelms]

Came home from vacation to no signal at all to 4 of the 5 recievers in the house. I actually still got programming on the one set. So a tech comes out, replaces the Zinwell switch under the house. He said the strike got the switch pretty good. Got all my signals back, all in the high 90's (except for the ones that have always been in the 80's). About 4 hours after he left I started getting pixelation on any channel I tuned to. So I reset the reciever and had no problem the rest of the night. Yesaterday my wife's recording of one of her soaps was pixelating again. I'm pretty confident the tech did not check alignment of the dish since he was getting such high numbers.

Could the lightning zap have gotten anything else that is making it pixelate? This in only on the HD box, none of the SD boxes are affected. Wanted to get opinions here before calling back (the tech left his card to call with his number if I had any problems)

 

[gcisko]

Could the lightning zap have gotten anything else that is making it pixelate? This in only on the HD box, none of the SD boxes are affected. Wanted to get opinions here before calling back (the tech left his card to call with his number if I had any problems)

Lighting is gazillions of volts @ bazillions of amperes so I think anything is possible. I would call them back.

 

[GBFAN]

If it was a lightning hit I can guarantee the LNB is shot.

 

[dnelms]

If it was a lightning hit I can guarantee the LNB is shot.

If the LNB is gone, how am I getting all programming? Now I agree that it could have been damaged and is dying a slow death, but it is working right now.

 

[AirRocker]

If the LNB is gone, how am I getting all programming? Now I agree that it could have been damaged and is dying a slow death, but it is working right now.

It's probably fried... It may be functioning... Just not properly...

 

[davring]

If lightning actually struck the dish you are very lucky that is all that is wrong, considering all the other possibilities; like the structure the dish is attached to

 

[Ken S]

If lightning actually struck the dish it wouldn't be there...and if it was attached to your house it would have some other serious issues.

 

[PCampbell]

I had a near miss and it took out the LNB and one recever.

 

[2dogz]

Lighting is gazillions of volts @ bazillions of amperes

And how many watts would that be ?

 

[bakers12]

And how many watts would that be ?

Why, 1.21 gigawatts, of course!

 

[dnelms]

May have found part of the problem. I checked signal strengths again and was getting 0's (zero) on 101. So I switched to tuner 2 and all signals were in the high 90's. Checked every other one on tuner 1 and then tuner 2. Tuner 1 always were 0's. So I reset the reciever and checked signals again. Now both tuners gave 90s. Guess that explains why after a reboot the other day the pixelating quit. So looks like whatever got to the switch, may have gotten further. But why would a reset make the tuner start getting signal strengths again?

 

[scottchez]

Same thing happened to me 3 weeks ago. Blew out my switch.

Had an electrician out, turns out lighinging did not strick the dish or the house but the house near by down the street. Got a surge that came through took out the switch and a PC. My LNB has been fine for weeks. Sat tech replaced the switch no issues since.

I bet you got a surge. A hit on the dish and other things would be out and you would see a small char mark where it hit.

 

[batrad]

got a surge to last week..took out both our HR21's and 2 TVs (Plasma and LCD)..along with lots of other equipment

Still waiting for the DirecTV folks to show up..will have them check the LNB's as well to make sure they were not damaged

 

[GBFAN]

If the LNB is gone, how am I getting all programming? Now I agree that it could have been damaged and is dying a slow death, but it is working right now.

I had a lightning hit in my backyard that hit the cable box and traveled through the cable to the connection on the back of my house. It then traveled across the aluminum siding and arced to the ground wire connected to my dish and damaged the LNB. This happened a few years ago before HD. My house now has vinyl siding and there is no cable connection to my house.