922 4DTV Receiver Broke???

[iammike]

Hey guys,

I installed my new lnbf over the weekend. The good news is the lnbf works pretty well, the bad news is I think my 922 is broken. I'd been having a lot of pixelation problems for a while, which I attributed to stability issues with my old lnb's. I've been giving a lot of thought to just going FTA for a while, so I decided to get one of the combo C/KU lnbf's that Sat AV sells. It works great by the way, but I'll start another thread to discuss it. Anyways, after installing the lnbf and getting it tuned correctly I had as good and maybe slightly better C-band quality and KU was about 10 points higher. Unfortunatly, I still had the pixelation issue. The pixelation problem occurs every few seconds. It's not a consistent amount of time, maybe 5 seconds one time then 15 the next, but never more than a minute before I get a little blurp of pixelation. The signal quality never wavers though.

I was testing out different cables, and also fine tuning different sat locations and was doing a lot of cable swapping between the 4dtv and my Coolsat. One time after I swapped them my signal strength dropped to 10 and quality jumped to 99 for every channel. Unfortunately, I didn't have any picture, digital or analog, and the color display was all of a sudden black and white. Cutting it off and on, unplugging it and plugging it right back in, unplugging and waiting an hour and then replugging, didn't work. Finally last night I went to drastic measures and did a master reset. Now I've got the same symptoms, signal strength of 10 and no channels analog or digital. The Coolsat still pulls in channels fine though, and I can move the dish with the 4dtv.

I'm thinking I'm going to have to send it to ATS for repair, but thought I'd check with you guys first. Anybody have any ideas?

Thanks,
Mike

 

[ediemash]

the 10 signal i found is often because of a wire tip. before thinking 922 is bad try a few things first. are you using any svideo wire - this causes the black and white issue. how are the analogs, are the pixelations on all sat?

 

[iammike]

the 10 signal i found is often because of a wire tip. before thinking 922 is bad try a few things first. are you using any svideo wire - this causes the black and white issue. how are the analogs, are the pixelations on all sat?

I may have the svideo connection going into a capture card on my PC. I'll check that. Right now I don't get any picture on any channel. Prior to that, the analogs worked fine and, I forgot this previously, but the ITC digital didn't seem to pixelate. At least the Nebraska PBS channels didn't have the issue. I'm going to show some ignorance now, but what do you mean by a "wire tip"?

Thanks,
Mike

 

[ediemash]

if you havent changed the cable ends you probably dont have anything to worry about, the only time ive had the signal 10 issue is because of the ends of cable were messed with and lnb was bad, was hit by lightning

if the pixelation on all sats it probably needs fixing but if it just on certain ones its probably something else, also is it a certain time of day it happens. ive seen this happen if the lnb gets too hot or when youre on a splitter with your fta receiver

 

[iammike]

I know it's not the lnbf, as it works fine with my Coolsat. There shouldn't be any bad cables, again because the FTA is working. I'm wondering if I may have messed up a cable connection somewhere though. I was tracing several pieces of coax I have run between the inside and outside of the house, using the 4dtv yesterday. While I was doing that, I had the thing twisted around so I could access the back. I'll recheck all the connections when I get home tonight.

Thanks for the suggestions!
Mike

 

[iammike]

Well guys, I just checked the wires and everything looks good. I even swapped the c-band coax over to my Coolsat and I'm getting 94 quality on the networks on Galaxy 16. If I swap the cable back to the 922, it's signal 10 and no analog picture. I can't even try for the 4dtv digitals because after doing the master reset last night I don't have the channel maps. This is also an R5000 modded 922, so I'm thinking I may need to talk with Nextcomm about repairs instead of ATS.

Anyone have any other suggestions to try before I e-mail Nextcomm?

 

[Hermitman]

Here's a couple of ideas that might help. Do you have the DC light lit on the front panel when on a DCII channel? Are the C/Ku cables attached to the right inputs? Have you selected LNBF in the options LNB/LNBF menu? Have you turned off and unplugged the unit, removed the VCII module and then seen if there's any difference in reception? Have you tried either C-band or Ku-band by itself and seen the results. Have you double checked the skew angle of the LNBF? Just some ideas. Good Luck.

 

[iammike]

Here's a couple of ideas that might help. Do you have the DC light lit on the front panel when on a DCII channel? Are the C/Ku cables attached to the right inputs? Have you selected LNBF in the options LNB/LNBF menu? Have you turned off and unplugged the unit, removed the VCII module and then seen if there's any difference in reception? Have you tried either C-band or Ku-band by itself and seen the results. Have you double checked the skew angle of the LNBF? Just some ideas. Good Luck.

Hermitman,

Thanks for the reply. I think I've tried pretty much all of your suggestions. I wasn't getting a DC light prior to doing the reset and of course now I don't have the channel maps so no DC light at all. C/KU cables are attached correctly, I took the C band cable off and attached it to my Coolsat. I was getting 94 quality on the Caribbean networks, so I think the dish must be tuned reasonably well. The LNBF selection is correct and I've unplugged and replugged the thing a whole lot of times.

I think at this point I'm just going to send it to ATS. I exchanged e-mails with them today, and they felt like they could work around the R5000 mod.

Thanks again for trying! By the way I'm very jealous of that dish farm you've got in your avatar.

Mike

 

[Hermitman]

The only thing left to try is removing the VCII module. I've seen when those modules go bad, they sometimes short out and draw too much power from the receiver's power supply. This causes strange results when trying to receive channels. Good luck.

 

[iammike]

The only thing left to try is removing the VCII module. I've seen when those modules go bad, they sometimes short out and draw too much power from the receiver's power supply. This causes strange results when trying to receive channels. Good luck.

Another good suggestion, but I've already had it in and out a couple of times. Thanks!

 

[photoman76]

Have you checked the voltage of the lnb in on the back of the 922? It sounds like it's not putting out any voltage to the lnbf. You may have damaged something inside the 922 when swapping cables. Did you unplug the 922 before swapping cables?

 

[iammike]

Have you checked the voltage of the lnb in on the back of the 922? It sounds like it's not putting out any voltage to the lnbf. You may have damaged something inside the 922 when swapping cables. Did you unplug the 922 before swapping cables?

I haven't checked the voltage, but I think you're probably right. I was doing a lot of cable swapping over the weekend. I have a weather-proof box on the outside of the house where I make connections from my dishes to the receivers inside. I took a TV out with me and was trying different cables to try to solve my pixelation problem. I was turning it off, with the remote, and then swapping cables without going inside. My guess is I forgot to turn it off one time. I didn't think it was necessary to actually unplug a 4dtv when swapping cables. Am I wrong about that?

 

[photoman76]

I believe voltage is still supplied to the lnbs even when the 922 is off. I've swapped cables with the 922 plugged in as I'm more worried about the 922 rebooting properly after unplugging and plugging it back in. But there is always some chance of damaging something when swapping cables when the are energized.

 

[iammike]

I came across something interesting yesterday. I was getting ready to box up my 922 and send it to ATS. It had been unplugged since last Friday, so I thought what the heck I'll give it one more try. Over the weekend I set up a vbox to move my dish and connected it to my Coolsat and a PC with a A/B switch. I pointed the dish at Galaxy 15 with the Coolsat and tuned in the California channel. I slaved the 922 to the Coolsat and was shocked to find that I could pull in Classic Arts just fine. Then I pointed it over to transponder 3 and pulled down the channel maps without problem. Next I used the Coolsat and pointed the dish over to G3, and was able to pick up the NPS muxes on the 922. At this point, I was starting to become a pretty happy boy. Unfortunately I came back to earth very soon. After using it with the Coolsat, I reconnected the 922 directly to the dish and was back to signal 10. It looks like the 922 can tune channels just fine, it just can't energize the lnbf's.

I'm going to do some more experimenting, but thought I'd post this update in case some one smarter than me had an easy solution.

 

[duchen]

I hate to step into this discussion with the real experts (I call someone when I need to fix things), but I think you are right. If the Coolsat receives a good signal, but the 4DTV does not, it is probably the voltage to the LNB.

I had the reverse experience. My Coolsat (which is slaved to the 4DTV) could receive C band signals, but not KU. The 4DTV received both.

It turns out that there was no voltage powering the LNB from the Coolsat and Coolsat replaced the unit (as it was new and within the warranty period).

I think what was happening was that the 4DTV voltage was sufficient to receive C band, but not KU band. But, the 4DTV was not strong enough for KU band.

When I received the Coolsat back, I forgot to turn on the voltage. I still received C band, but not KU. When I turned on the voltage, I began receiving KU channels as well (except at 87 and 85 degrees).

It sounds like you may have a similar problem because when you slave to 4DTV to the Coolsat, you get signal.

 

[iammike]

Well guys, I may have to admit to something really stupid here. I'm not doing so yet, but I thought I should post this follow-up in case anybody else made the mistake that I did. Here's what's happened since I last posted to this thread:

I sent my 922 to ATS for repair. It took them a while to get to it as they are really backed up, but when they finally did they hooked it up and it worked great for about 2 weeks. They couldn't reproduce the problem. They gave it the once over replaced a couple of components that can be common sources of problems for a 922 but otherwise never found anything wrong. When they sent it back to me I plugged it in and immediately experienced the same problem I'd had before.

Needless to say I was less than impressed. I decided to just be sure everything was hooked up correctly, as I've been using a vbox and PC card with my BUD the last few weeks. I first took the VBox out which solved nothing, and then I realized that I also had a diseqc switch in line. I just took it out and now the 922 is working perfectly for me too.

I think what must have happened is when I first put in my new lnbf, I was swapping wires around some without turning off the 922 first. Yeah I know in hindsight not a particularly smart move. I think I must have given it a short that caused it to get confused for a while. When I let it sit for several days and then slaved it to the Coolsat, it must have had time to dissipate whatever charge had hosed it up in the first place. The problem then was that I'd already put the diseqc switch in and forgot about it being there. That's the only thing that makes sense to me, as when I had it slaved the Coolsat could talk to the switch and pass a good signal to the 922.

Oh well, I guess now I at least have a 922 that's like new again. When ATS had it they checked it out completely and it passed every test except for a capacitor that was a little out of spec. which they replaced. I'm going to e-mail Tom at ATS and see if he can confirm that I was stupid with the diseqc switch, but I suspect that one or more of my Satelliteguys friends will probably confirm this long before I hear back from Tom.

Mike

 

[iammike]

For future reference, Tom confirmed my theory in an e-mail yesterday.