Off-the-air tuners not working hr10-250

rjnerd · 06-08-2007, 06:53 PM

picked up a pair of hr 10-250's cheap. Waiting for DirectTV to send me the new cards, so they can be activated. In the mean time, trying to use the off-the-air tuner. Hooked up known good antennas, and I am in a high signal strength area. (under 10km from the hill that most of the local broadcasters have their antennae on. Too much signal can be an issue around here).

Both off-air tuners on both machines show squat signal. (their satelite tuners are fine) All four tuners report goose eggs. The off-air tuners are supposed to work, right? I even went thru guided setup again, telling one of them it is "off air only". Still reading straight zeros.

Is there a special incantation? Did I sacrifice the wrong color chicken? I would expect one of the 4 to show some signal, just by chance, I wouldn't expect all 4 to be toast.

-dp-

JimSpence · 06-08-2007, 07:02 PM

I believe that without DVR activation the OTA tuners are useless.

Redux · 06-08-2007, 07:13 PM

Pick a card. Any card.

rjnerd · 06-08-2007, 07:22 PM

That was gratutious of them. They could let it do something while they get their act together. They don't let you move an already activated card to another receiver, so I guess I have paperweights until they get around to sending the new ones...

Redux · 06-08-2007, 08:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rjnerd

They could let it do something while they get their act together.

Should work for OTA (but no guide data or DVR capability other than buffer) with any old card.

BigBearf · 06-08-2007, 10:45 PM

I think that they will recieve OTA just not record without active account. Did you run the guided setup and specify OTA? Just a thought because most of the upgraded drives do not have OTA enabled by default.

Hope this helps,
BigBearf

Runch Machine · 06-09-2007, 07:34 AM

Just in case you don't know, digital channels are on different numbers than their analog counter part. For example, in my area analog channel 4 has their digital broadcast on UHF channel 32. See antennaweb.org for a list of analog channels and their digital equivalent.

bsnelson · 06-09-2007, 09:18 AM

I think, between the posters here, you've got the right answers. Put any access card at all in them, and that'll get you a little farther. Try the autoscan on the OTA tuners, or, even better, patiently go through all of the channels, pausing at least 5 seconds between each. As Runch Machine said, the ATSC channels are usually at a very different place than their NTSC counterparts in a given market.

As for the "they could let it do something until they get their act together": No, they couldn't.

DirecTV gains nothing by having a box that will have some function without a subscription. They subsidized the box, now they're trying to get their investment back.

Brad

captain_video · 06-09-2007, 06:49 PM

You can watch OTA programming without activation or even an access card, but only if you've got the HDTivo tuned to an OTA channel. If you tune to a DTV channel you'll get an error message about inserting your access card. You'll get guide data with an inactive account but you must have a card inserted.

There is no special setup required to enable OTA reception, unless you want to specify a secondary market. You just need to run guided setup and specify your zip code to get the OTA channel guide data for your area. You'll also need to specify two cables connected to the back of the HDTivo if you want dual tuner activation. Dual tuners means that you can record from any combination of two of the four available tuners at any given time (two DTV tuners and two ATSC tuners).

cramer · 06-10-2007, 01:14 AM

If you are judging by the signal strength screen, DON'T. In my experience, it's broken most of the time. The one sitting on the shelf in front of me has worked exactly TWICE. And I had to reboot it both times.