unable to get D* HDs to work

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have a problem with my HR10. OTA HD works (tho have to get a better antenna) but can't get the D* sat HD channels (few as they are) to work.

have talked to D* on the phone twice & they've done the reset card/re-auth receiver/etc hokey-pokey, but no dice.

set-up is :
3-LMB oval dish w/3 lines running out, 2 of them split into ~8 outputs w/a splitter/multi-switch thing I got from somewhere a long time ago. one goes straight to another box in another part of the house.

strong (85%+) signal for all three satellites, on all transponders which have active signals. there are a couple on two of the three sats which are empty, but none are missing on the ones which have the HDTV programming based on what the tech support people told me.

have had the unit for well over a year, but finally got the HD TV a few months back and got everything situated so made the call to add the MPEG-2 channels for as long as they'll be around. bought it used locally & have had no issues thus far. it hasn't been hooked up to a phone line for ~3 months, so dunno what level software I've got, but it hasn't had any of the horror story stuff I've read about here in a bit of browsing.


anyway, here's the failure mode :

1) when doing the guided set-up/re-acquire satellite information step, either as part of a hard reboot via power-down, soft re-boot thru the box or just the "hey get me connected again" step, the OS tells me that it's failed to acquire a signal on either the 119° (B) & 110° (C) satellites, even tho the signal strength check shows them both to be there & strong.

2) when the HD channels which I should get are selected you get different failure modes - some of them just show a black screen with no message or anything, some of them give a "no signal in from Sat A/B" error. there are a couple which give the "you don't get this channel, call us & we'll charge you for it" or whatever it is message, but I'm not as concerned about those as the other ones.

so is there something wrong with the box or the signal or the dish or what ?

D* suggested that I try another HD receiver of some sort to see whether it's the dish/signal or the box & may try that, but if I've just gotten bad tech support I don't want to go to the trouble of all that.



Ben

 

huh. how come the "view signal strength" thing sees strong signals on all three then ?

I think the multiswitch only has 2 inputs, but perhaps there are 4. I have another one which I bought when I thought the one I had wasn't working, perhaps it has 4 inputs. I'm about 25% into running new cable around the house anyway, so I guess I can do that all up at the same time.

for the time being I'll just kill the D* HD channels and focus on getting a good OTA antenna set-up which isn't too obtrusive. have strong signals as I'm less than 15 miles from all my locals, so just have to put something up which works well.

the tuner in the HR10 seems weaker than the one in the new Samsung DLP set we have, but probably a matter of technology marching on.


Ben

 

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checked thru every sat/transponder on the HR10. the only ones which are not 85% or more are #18 on the 101° which is 65% & #28 on both the 101° and the 119° which I believe are supposed to be blank.

on the non-HD TiVo in the same room I got different results. on the 101° I got ~18% lower signal on the A tuner (must have done a poor job of terminating that cable and/or the splitter is messed up somehow). on the 119° I got no signal on either tuner on 22,24,26,30 & 32. and on the 110° I got no signal at all. so I guess I'm lucky I didn't hook those wire up to the HR10.


so the fact that things work fine for the non-HD channels thru the multi-switch doesn't mean that I'm actually getting all 3 sats, huh ? interesting that the receivers can be fooled into thinking they have the signal from a specific sat by the way the multi-switch works.

my HR10 is running software version 6.3c, should I fear it ever getting "upgraded" to later versions ? I never do ppv, so don't need to have it call in for any reason AFAIK and can put it off indefinitely, right ?

interesting about the OTA tuner being substandard, but they probably cut corners somewhere.

perhaps at this point I'll stick with the OTA HD & wait a bit longer before going to retention & adding an HR20 w/all the new equipment & install & such for whatever I can talk the CSR into. there are still 100s of hours of TV on the various TiVos scattered around the house, so we can keep ourselves entertained w/o HD on everything for a while longer.



Ben

 

test channel 490 shows "Test SAT A (101) Odd Txp 13V"
491 shows "Test 2 SAT A (101) Even Txp 18V"
492 gives no message or error
493 & 494 give the "Searching for signal" message

so perhaps that's more confirmation of what Jim noted in terms of the multiswitch being the culprit.

I'll have to run a 50' piece of cable up from where the straight run from the dish ends up now to check, tho since there's no HD set downstairs to try.

the dish has all 3 LNBs together, it's about 4 years old.

if I were to run two straight lines off the dish to the HR10, would that in theory get me all the signals ? probably easier to do that than get another multiswitch, at least for a short term solution. or long term I guess, since we don't have any plans to add more HDTVs to the household.


Ben

 

the HD channels should come back to the guide after a while, this happened during my time on the phone with tech support on my HR10. the guide fully populates over time, not sure how long it should take.

but just because there's a guide doesn't mean that there's anything to watch, which is the problem I have....


Ben

 

dunno. haven't bothered to mess with it & called & quit the HD package for the time being.

thinking about it a bit today, I was considering just calling retention & getting an HR20 & whatever amount of free HD-ness they're going to offer up. I'm not too enthused about the non-TiVo OS but if I get the larger 5 LNB dish & the free install & everything, I guess it will will work pretty well. plus I'll get the HR10 working at the same time. we end up watching enough (too much) TV anyway, that we'll use two TiVos anyway.

we can burn off the 100+ hrs we have on the SD TiVo and retire it from duty & add the HD to the other SD TiVo we have running. the SD TiVos will continue to function as playback machines even if they're no longer authorized or connected to the dish, right ?

we'd be sort of staying true to the TiVo and all but having the HR20 in the house at the same time. hey, it's like "Big Love", only with DVRs instead of wives

most people able to get something along the lines of the $19.95 install, lease on the box, 6 months of free HD & whatnot, right ?


Ben