Dish problem...

[allthatufear]

Hey guys, new member of the board here and new customer of Dish Network, i've had it only a couple months now with no problems (well I did have the signal going out alot). Well after weeks of signal problems I called Dish, who said our apartment has the maintenance take car of service calls. Our apartment just got a new deal with dish and we don't have a Dish, I guess the apartment complex uses the big dish they had for the last tv stuff they had. Anyways so the guy comes over (who knows NOTHING about it) and ask's what my problem is, I tell the guy this past sunday the signal was going out atleast every 20 mins.

He looks it over, doing nothing really, and messes with wires and says well one wire was loose, it could be that. He also said that the 2 DVR receiver boxes should be flat on the floor and not upside down (but i guess he forgot HE was the one who installed it). So anyways, the signal still goes out atleast once a day, and now the program info has to be downloaded atleast 10 times a day. I don't know if the guy did something and messed it up or what, I am asking you guys cause these guys know nothing and all dish can say is our guys are supposed to be taking care of it, this sucks cause these guys are the same ol maintenance crew we've had for awhile now, so they don't know what they are doing. Also would me not having a Phone line cause these problems? Cause we don't have a home phone, just cell phones. Before we got Dish we asked if having a phone line was mandatory and they said its only mandatory for PPV stuff and we shouldn't have a problem, but there would be a extra fee...which is ok, only if this cable worked!


Thanks guys,
Justin

 

[allthatufear]

Oh by the way, the box we have is a DISH DVR 522 (if that helps any)

 

[lakebum431]

The phone line has nothing to do with it. Go to the point dish screen and tell us what your signal strengths are on transponder 11 on satellites 110 and 119.

 

[allthatufear]

Sorry, but I'm new to this, how do i get to this screen and be able to do that? Also i was checking the system info and it said error for 'Q-Box 2'. Whats that? Now when I check it, its ok. I've had to download 2 more program updates in 20 mins.

 

[boba]

Menu 6-1-1

 

[Todd Humphrey]

When I see "downloading program guide" as often as it seems you do, I think the unit is bad. It could be the signal affecting the program guide, but if that were the case you would have a very hard time watching any TV.

On other hand, with the dish and cabling deal you discribed, that also raises a big red flag. The 522 requires two satellite signals for proper operation. If you are only feeding it one satellie signal (one coax) then that can be a source of problems. I doubt your apartment is passing DPP signals to your units.

A check switch procedure will verify what type of signal distribution they are using.
Do a check procedure MENU > 6 > 1 > 1 highlight "check switch" press select, highlight "test" press select. Your receiver will do a series of test. At the completion (1-3 minutes) there will be a switch type indicated at the top of the screen. Tell us the switch type and if you see any "X" on the screen.

 

[allthatufear]

Ok i selected check switch, it then came up saying checking 'Dish Q-Box'. Then it came up with a error saying 'A Dish Q-Box was detected instead of a multi-dish switch. If you want to search for satellites available to your Q-Box, please press the 'scan' button'.

I've had to download prgram info several times once again, and now it lost its signal again, its acquiring it once again, but i noticed it now shows Satellite:110, Spotbeam:4 (0mhz) then the progress, reason I mention this is I don't ever remember seeing something called 'spotbeam'.

I would list the signal its picking up on both satellites signals, but the signal is down and its just stuck and doing nothing and stuck at progress 2 of 5, blah.

 

[allthatufear]

Well last night when i wrote about it being stuck on progress 2 of 5, now I wake up this morning and its stuck on progess 0 of 5 and doing nothing. I called Dish and all they got me to do was unplug it for 15 seconds then plug it. Which of course did nothing, now I gotta wait the whole weekend to have a guy come monday. This sucks.

 

[MikeD-C05]

Heres what you do. UNplug the sat cables hooked up to your receiver. Then run a checkswitch to clear the matrix. Then re attach your sat cables and re run the check switch. This should fix your problems if it is a minor one . I have had this happen many times on all 3 of my 622s at one time or another. This fixes it. If you could change out the seperator it helps too.

 

[mdwatt]

Uhhh....guys....he's got a QUAM system. It's setup is sort of like a head-end for a cable system. They have one or two main dishes which then goes to a distribution bank that sends it out to the receivers. There could be hundreds of receivers hooked up to it. I don't know enough about those systems to tell how to trouble shoot them. Can anyone else help?

 

[allthatufear]

Well after I wrote this I did some stuff to the box, one of the things I did was set the box back to factory defaults. Just incase the guy messed something up. And now I haven't really had any problems, but I now noticed the box has a blue light on which is 'TV 2'. I have no clue what that is, I also noticed the system is running in 'Dual Mode', whats that mean? I still have no clue whats going on....hopefully this will stop. Also, the 2 small boxes that the cable wires go through then to the receiver, I was told it was important for these boxes to be flat on the floor and not upside down or anything. He told me this yet a couple months ago when he installed it he threw both boxes behind the tv and just had them hanging there.

 

[allthatufear]

Finally did the point the dish part, on transponder 11 Sat 110 the MHz is 363 and on Sat 119 its MHz is 445