connections and cabling question

[cparker]

Problem being investigated: Occasionally my "main" receiver in the living room gives me the "acquiring satellite" message while my OTHER receiver is fine.

Sorry this is a bit long, but I'm trying to describe accurately ...

I have a 2 dish system looking at 61.5, 110, 119
The 61.5 dish is up on my roof and the other (dish pro plus) is mounted on the back wall of my house.
Coax comes down from the 61.5 dish to the "main" dish.

I have 2 receivers. A 622 in the living room and a 508 in the bedroom

I don't see any splitter/combiners anywhere in the cable runs except for the one right at the 622 going from the single cable to the 2 for connection to the 622. The cable run from the dish locations to the main TV location is a bit long. Probably nearing 75 feet. Total cable run to my bedroom TV is probably more like 25 feet (for comparison). Cables from dish to main TV go from dish, to grounding block (connector1), inside garage, across family room to a wall plate (connector2), across basement where I had to put 2 cable together to reach because I couldn't find a single length long enough at the time (connector3), and up into the living room to the TV where it is split to the back of the 622 (connector4).

As you can see I have 4 places where the cable to the main receiver is not continuous. I've labeled them as connectorX above for simplicity. I know I can't eliminate the grounding block or the splitter (which I believe in this case is a diplexer?) at the back of the 622. I really can't eliminate the connection at the wall plate in the family room due to the way the house is constructed. The only possible connector I could eliminate is the one in the basement where 2 coax lengths are joined.

I have gone through and replaced the wall jack in the family room and the barrel (splice) connector in the basement with the rated ones (blue centers). The only connection being made that does NOT have blue centers is the grounding block.

I can only think of 2 improvements I could make. One is obviously to replace the cable running the length of the basement with a single piece and eliminate that connection halfway that now splices 2 cables together. The other would be to completely abandon the current coax run with its many connections and install a completely new cable from the dish to the main receiver. I would do this by running the cable on the outside of the house (tucking it into various siding channels I could completely hide it). I might be able to eliminate as much as 25 feet off that run to the main receiver by doing this and I'd only have a grounding block connection between the dish and the 622.

I don't think the "acquiring satellite" issue is receiver related because I just replaced a 625 with this 622 and the 625 did it as well. It has only really done this since we rearranged teh house and moved the TV from the family room to the living room (which required a LOT more cable that we've had up until that time.... added 50 feet to the cable run at least). The bedroom receiver seems to never do this "acquiring satellite" and we have noted the living room receiver doing it while the bedroom receiver does not and this really has me loking at the cabling as that's the most obvious difference between the 2 receivers.

So.... any thoughts would be appreciated. Does it sound like I'm on the right track in trying to chase this down?

 

[garys]

The most common problem causing this is a loose or bad wire/connection. Since it is with only one receiver, start at the back of the 622 to the separator (this may look like a splitter, but it is not) all the way back to either a switch or lnb which ever you get to first.

 

[mdwatt]

Sounds like bad fittings or splices. The distance you're talking about should not affect your signal. If it were in excess of 200', then maybe. If your problem is limited to one location, and you had the same issue on another receiver, then that eliminates the dish/switch, and receiver, and leaves only a cable problem. Start replacing ends from your DPP seperator back to the ground block, making sure that your cable is correctly prepped before putting fittings on it, and use good quality fittings, not the cheapos you get at Radio Shack or Wal-Mart. Go to Lowe's and get the PPC fittings. You should be able to find all the appropriate supplies there. That should fix your problem.

 

[cparker]

When the installer was out here he replaced all the fittings outside and made up new pigtails from the DPP LNBs. I went through and replaced the wall jack, grounding block and the one splice I had (all with white centers) and put in the 3GHz rated fittings (blue centers). So far the problem has not manifested. I'm going to give it a week before I call it "fixed" but I've been told by a couple of custom installers (friends of friends kinda thing) that those fittings could very well have been the entire problem.

We shall see.

OH! And beware the blue center cheaters! There's a chinese company making connectors that are just blue.... not rated.... infact teh wall jacks are blue on the "room" side and white on the "inside-the-wall" side. Make sure the packaging says they're rated correctly.

 

[mdwatt]

Lots of installers do that. They put new stuff on the outside, and leave all the stuff on the inside untouched. Big msitake.