Channel Changing still unreliable on Dish Receiver

1819 Views 4 Replies 4 Participants Last post by ubell, Jan 19, 2006

sam5483

Discussion Starter · Dec 28, 2005

I have a Series 2 Tivo hooked up to my Dish Network (Satellite Receiver is a JVC TU-5500U) and the channel changing is probably only 60-80% reliable, with the failures primarily related to switching to local channels.

As you can imagine this is quite frustrating, as these are not some rarely used esoteric channels that cause the problem. My national cable channels come in on 3 digit channels (100-999) but my local channels come in on 4 digit channels (8400-8413). To make it worse, about half the time I am taken to the infamous Dish Network Screen of Death ("You do not subscribe to this channel") which make me get the dish network remote to get out of the problem. To get into specifics, most of the time a digit is dropped, it is the first digit so 8407 becomes 407.

Thinking it might be the IR emitters, I replaced the Tivo issued unit with a Xanotech IR emitter which sits directly in front of the IR "eye" of the receiver. As such, I'm no longer concerned that this is a hardware issue.

Furthermore, I've tried every code from 1001 to 10043 with 10001, 10011, and 10043 working to varying degrees of success. Seems like the best I can come up with is about 80% success with 10001 slow.

Thoughts?

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JimSpence

· #2 · Dec 28, 2005

First of all you need to remove those channels you don't subscribe to from the Channels You receive list. This will help eliminate the "You do not subscribe to this channel" problem. But not entirely, if the TiVo is selecting a bad channel.

Then go to the compatibility thread for hints for controlling that sat box.
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=128743

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sam5483

Discussion Starter · #3 · Dec 29, 2005

I've already made sure that I've deselected all channels which aren't on my subscription. The problem arises, when Tivo tries to send a four digit code such as 8407 to the Sat Receiver and for whatever reason, the reciever isn't getting the 8 so my receiver tunes to channel 407, while my Tivo thinks it is actually on 8407.

I've also gone through the compatibiilty thread and tried the codes listed for my JVC TU-5500DU receiver as well as a number of others that are said to work on other recievers. Short of trying every code combination, I don't know what my other options are.

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Bpstein

· #4 · Dec 30, 2005

I'm having the exact same problem. We have a Dish DP301 receiver at work. After telling everyone how great Tivo is (it works fine on my Comcast cable box at home) I'm trying to convince co-workers here that Tivo is actually worthwhile.

I've spent maddening amounts of time trying to get the channel changer to work properly, and I've also deselected the channels that we don't get.

What seems to happen is that once Tivo goes to a channel to which we don't subscribe, I get the Dish network blue screen of death and the Tivo has difficulty recovering from that. Even when it tries to switch to a channel to which we subscribe, the screen of death can persist.

What seems to fix the problem is to manually change the channel on the Dish receiver itself, to get back to a channel to which we actually subscribe.

It's the worst feeling to have programmed the Tivo to record a program on a channel to which we subscribe and find that it just recorded an hour of the screen of death.

I'm struggling to find a better solution. By the way, I'm assuming that you don't have to hit enter on the remote to change the channel. This is what Tivo asks me when I am optimizing the channel changer. Is this correct?

Thanks.

Ben

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ubell

· #5 · Jan 19, 2006

We have the same problem with our series 1 and Dish 311 receiver. I really think the ir output has gone flakey, the box is long in the tooth. It has gotten worse lately with the receiver not seeing any channel information on the ir. I have tried using a new IR cable but it does not help.
(Fortuately our main use of Tivo is with cable, we only have this problem when we take or Tivo
to our second house. You have to take your Tivo on vacation, don't you?) I was hoping that it was just a matter of tweaking the jack a little, but unfortunately the jack is sealed in a plastic cover so you cannot get to it.

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