612 OTA recording "glitches"

[sam_gordon]

I got a 612 DVR last November. I do *NOT* subscribe to the locals, I pick all the locals up just fine with an antenna in the attic. I manually program the 612 to record my OTA shows. However, whenever I playback shows I record on my Fox affiliate, the signal will breakup or I'll get a "part of the recording was lost because of loss of signal". I've NEVER seen that message when watching an event "live" (through the 612, or on either of my TVs).

The Fox transmitter is <5miles away, and is a low-V (ch. 4). They are supposed to be changing to UHF (31) after the cutoff next month.

My signal path... antenna, ~75-100' RG6, amplifier, 3 way split, diplexer, ~50' RG6, Diplexer, 6db pad, 612. Dish suggested grounding the antenna line... did that. No help. I tried the 6db pad, a 10 db pad, and both pads. No help. Dish suggested a surge protector on the RG6 line... no help. Then they basically told me "we're not responsible for OTA reception issues". This is despite the fact two TVs, a PC tuner card, AND the 612 (when watching 'live') have NO issues.

Does anyone have an idea if this is because of the low-V channel? The closeness of the DTV transmitter? Piss-poor OTA recording (although my problem is limited to this one channel--- I only record two OTA channels... FOX & NBC)?

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks

 

[TheKrell]

The OTA tuner they put in 612's is not IMHO all that great. I have a Vizio HDTV and a Kworld USB tuner stick that are worse; all other tuners I have tried are better than the ones in my 2 612's. My usual trouble is with our local PBS affiliate, which I claim is either getting interference from adjacent channels or else interference with itself (multipath). But my daughter has lost some NBC programs she dearly wanted to record, and NBC is one of our strongest signals.

Are the "pads" you referred to above attenuators?

Can you watch the program live while it's being recorded and observe the problem? You say it never messes up when you are watching live.

 

[sam_gordon]

Krell-

Yes, the "pads" are attenuators. Two things keep me from watching a recording program "live"... 1) the kids are usually around and these aren't exactly kid friendly shows. and 2) I can't get my head around watching a show, then watching it again. I'm basing the "it doesn't mess up when I watch live" when I watch other programming on the same channel.

 

[howie14]

Sam,

I've had the same problem a few times with OTA on my ViP211. These tuners seem to be really sensitive compared to the actual tuner on my HDTV and the digital converters I've bought for our SD units.

I've sometimes suspected, in my case, that the tuner is more likely to be flaky while recording if I'm watching/surfing the cable channels on DISH while recording FTA. I have no proof of that, but if the OTA is something I want to archive, I try to avoid watching anything else at that time.

Most of my problems have also occurred with signals in the 70s in strength, not with a transmitter practically in the neighborhood.

 

[tempVAdish]

It could also be multipath issues w/ the ant in the attic... I suffer from the multipath problems during "ducting" when signals come from all over... the ota will drop from 90-91 down to 70's and crap out...

just a thought...