Dish 322 receiver issues

[usmaak]

Hi,

First post here. How you all doing?

I have two Dish 322 dual tuner receivers, one upstairs and one downstairs. When a bird flies by, the dish goes out. I see the searching for satellites message and then five seconds later, I get an Error 002. The message says something to the effect of "the satellite is searching for a signal, press channel up or channel down to change channels". This isn't the exact text, but you get the point.

This only happens on the first tuner on each receiver. On the second tuner, the standard searching for satellites message stays there until the bird passes by, and then the picture comes back on. The problem with error code 002 is that it will not ever return to the program until you've pressed page up or page down. This is causing problems with my TiVo. Once the bird has flown past the dish, all I get is an hour or whatever of Error 002.

Does anyone know anything about this error or how I can get my receiver to go back to it's regularly scheduled programming all by itself instead of having to manually do something to the receiver to get it to go back?

Thanks

 

[Andrewwski]

I was just going to ask a similar question about this too.

I have a family member who had a VCR recording set for last night when she wasn't home. There was a thunderstorm that caused signal to be lost for a little while, but not until she got home. She recorded that message and ended up missing the entire show.

Seems stupid that it doesn't find the signal itself.

 

[volkodav]

pres menu 6-1-1 and and check signal strength on satellite 119 and 110 sounds like youre dish is out of alignment

 

[Andrewwski]

I doubt that's his issue. It's not mine. There's a consistant signal strength around 80 on a clear day, it only drops out periodically. After you press channel up/down for it to return, there's plenty of strength, it's just like it freezes into searching mode until you knock it out of it.

 

[usmaak]

In my case, I did lose the signal because of a small thunderstorm off to the southwest. But on tuner 1 I got the error 002 on both receivers. On tuner 2 the picture comes right back on. I'm wondering if there's some way to adjust the receiver so that it will function the same way on tuner 1 as on tuner 2.

 

[usmaak]

Someone in a different forum suggested that if both of the first tuners in the receivers are wired to the same LNB, then maybe the LNB is going bad. I don't really know what that means or if it makes sense. This is a new install (less than two months old), so I don't know how likely it is that something's already dying.

 

[Andrewwski]

Doubt it. I have the same issue with a newer install (about 1 month) and it only happens on the 322's, not the 311's.

 

[usmaak]

So it's probably a software problem with the 322 receiver. I wonder if they'd consider giving me four 311 receivers, but only charge me for two. That would fix the problem.

 

[Liquidforce88]

So it's probably a software problem with the 322 receiver. I wonder if they'd consider giving me four 311 receivers, but only charge me for two. That would fix the problem.

Ahh no. I would first have the system checked out. A bird flying by should not put the dish out.

 

[Gentleman]

Other 322 owners including me are having similiar issues with this receiver, I see the is a software upgrade L3.02 spooling, hopefully this will solve some of the issues

Bob

 

[DishSubLA]

Sounds like another quirk of the 322. However, I agree, a bird flying by should not cause you to lose signal, unless it is a big bird of prey, like a hawk, and he sits on your LNBF blocking the reflection. I knew of a lady who complained that every time a plane flew by--over a thousand feet in the air as they approached the airport 30 miles away--she would lose her Dish signal. It was properly aligned and no problems after that.

 

[usmaak]

Other 322 owners including me are having similiar issues with this receiver, I see the is a software upgrade L3.02 spooling, hopefully this will solve some of the issues

Bob

I checked both of my receivers. I have L422 on each of them.

I have an "advanced" tech coming out this afternoon. Hopefully something can be done.

 

[Gentleman]

Sorry, I mis read the tech portal L3.02 is for the 222

Bob

 

[fishhead]

322 problems

Sounds like maybe software, or it seems too that these receivers have a hard time with power outages and surges etc. Put them on a good surge protector.
What I usually do with this machine when it gets squirrelly is do a reboot out of the old smartcard slot- take any credit card and pop it in and out (you will see snow when you hit nerve central). Let it reboot, run a check switch, let it download new program guide. I think it probably also goes after new software too...
Anyway, that usually cures any ills with the receiver itself. My guess is that you are actually having a dish or wire issue. I would like to see the bird that is knocking the signal out he must me pretty impressive. I doubt if he's the culprit. You might have a branch of something that waves in front of the dish just a certain time of day, like when the "normal" afternoon breeze comes up etc.

 

[usmaak]

Sounds like another quirk of the 322. However, I agree, a bird flying by should not cause you to lose signal, unless it is a big bird of prey, like a hawk, and he sits on your LNBF blocking the reflection. I knew of a lady who complained that every time a plane flew by--over a thousand feet in the air as they approached the airport 30 miles away--she would lose her Dish signal. It was properly aligned and no problems after that.

Define properly aligned though. I have had techs out here a couple of times. They go up on the roof with some device for ten minutes and then come back down and say it's properly aligned. Each time they get done, the signal meter shows the exact same strength as it did before they went up. If that's properly aligned, then there's nothing more that can be done.

 

[usmaak]

Ok, the dish guy came out today. I talked to him for about a half an hour about the issues I'm having. They are:

1. Loss of satellite signal - The bird might have been a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much.
2. Error 002 after loss of signal on tuner 1 only.
3. Interference patterns on TV that might have to do with grounding.
4. Pixellation and artifacts.

It took me a while to get him to understand what I was getting at. He fixated on my TiVo as the source for all problems. And while I understand that artifacts CAN be caused by TiVo to a certain extent, the TiVo actually sits after the dish receiver, so it couldn't be the cause of the Error 002 and other issues. Plus, while most people use two Dish 322 receivers to use four televisions, I use two Dish 322 receiver to use two dual tuner televisions. This allows me to record one show on TiVo while watching TV on the second tuner.

So, how did it turn out?

Loss of signal: He looked at the the signal strength and indicated that it was a good signal and that I need to add 45 to what I see to get a measure of the true signal strength, because of the recent software update that adjusts the signal meter down. He did not attempt to tune it. He did go up on the roof and make sure that there was nothing blocking the way, such as trees. There really isn't much in the way of trees in my neighborhood, because it's not that old.

Error 002: I think he thought that this was normal, and indicated that it was searching for satellites. I indicated that even after the receiver has locked back onto the satellites, we still get the message on tuner 1, and that tuner 2 goes back to the picture immediately. He didn't think it could be the reciever, and said that he couldn't swap out receivers without authorization from Dish. Not that it would have done any good, I think, especially if it's software that's causing the issue. He DID indicate that he thought that it was an LNB issue and he switched out the LNB for a new one. He said that they're having a lot of problems with the newer LNBs, and a lot of them are proving to have issues. He said that a lot of installers are still using the older LNBs and even using used LNBs because they can be more reliable. The only problem was that for dual tuners, they would need to run two lines for each receiver if they used an old LNB. So I got a new LNB out of the deal. Not sure if it matters.

Interference potentially caused by grounding. He looked over the grounding and said that it looked as if it were done correctly. My house has a grounding post that my phone line is grounded to. He said that they don't like to ground to grounding posts, because they don't control how deep they are, or whether they're actually done correctly. When they ground to the electrical meter or the air conditioner, they control it. He also indicated that he could get in trouble if the install was inspected and it wasn't grounded to the meter. So he left that. He did say that on rare occasions, it was possible to get interference through the electrical meter.

Pixellation and artifacts: To be honest, the only time I see any pixellation is when the dish is on the verge of going out, and sometimes immediately after it comes back. The artifacts are what concerns me. They're not really noticable on regular television shows, the news and whatnot. Where they become really apparent is on sports. I find football games to be virtually unwatchable sometimes. It is like there are tons of little blurry dots floating around the player's heads. It's pretty bad sometimes. Also, boxing, tennis, golf. Anything like that. He didn't have much to say about that though.

I'm wondering if that could be a problem with the Dish 322 receiver in general. I wonder if going to HD would improve things, at least with the picture.