OTA Signal = 0, but reception fine?

[ckgoodwin]

Hey All,

I have recently finished upgrading and setting up my new (to me) HR10-250 via InstantCake and PTVnet, and after a brief, unhappy flirtation with 6.3a am running 3.1.5f which seem to be working ok.

One weird thing though is that when I check OTA signal strength from Mesages/Settings, I get zero readings (no signal detected) across the board but inspite of that am getting good reception for pretty much all my locals. I did have some reception issues on OTA when I first piloted the system with 6.3a which seemed to lead to the whole Tivo crapping out which is why I am back to 3.1.5f where the OTA reception seems to be stable

My antenna set up is currently a crappy little Silver Sensory screwed onto the top of my chimney so I had low expectations for signal strength, but I am confused about the zero readings/decent reception. Am I doing something wrong in how I check the signal strength?

- Chris

[dishrich]

You need to have one of the tuners on an actual OTA channel for the meter to register.
Also, there have been posts of sometimes needing to reboot to get it to work again.

[tonyquan]

tivo signal meter uses the frequency numbers, not the channel numbers. to get the frequency numbers for your area, go to antennaweb.org and fill out the relavant info. the resulting table has the frequency numbers as the rightmost column (frequency assignment)

[mwl001]

I'm assuming the previous posts take for granted you didn't know that the meter was frequency based (not channel-based). This happened to me after I switched to 6.3; reboots didn't help, but the meter started working again several weeks later spontaneously. I've noted only one time since then that the meter was non-functional, and again, I'm not sure a reboot will help.

[ckgoodwin]

Thanks for the replies all. Actually, I was not not aware that the meter was frequency based so my quick trials mainly scanned the frequencies in the 2-11 range where the channels numbers reside. I actually have the frequencies in hand from Antennaweb from when I set up my antenna - and clearly I did not scan up to many of the Bay Area freq assignments so I will try that when I get home tonight.

- Chris

[JimSpence]

There are two ways in which you can test OTA signal strengths.
This one requires that you're tuned to an OTA channel: Messages & Settings > System Test
This one allows testing of all OTA frequencies: Messages & Settings > Settings > Satellite & Off-Air Antenna > Test Off-Air Signal Strength

[mwl001]

Update:

Last night I was having some trouble with Pirates of the Caribbean on ABC, so I went to check my signal strength in Satellite and OTA settings (where I can see each frequency).

Meter wasn't working again.

[JimSpence]

Which method were you using to view the signal strength? See my reply above.