DP 811 OTA HD and Signal loss

[gryfon19]

OTA HD with 811 Receiver?

I have an 811 receiver connected to my Samsung DLP through component hookup. I bought an indoor HD antenna and tried pluggin it up to back of receiver and scanning digital channels but didn't pick anything up. I know ther are some available, apparently I'm doing something wrong. I have the antenna connected directly to back of recever. Is that right?! I need help, thanks.

 

[nippjas]

Welcome to SatelliteGuys,

Yes that right, Just make sure you didn't hook the OTA upto the Remote's antenna input.

Some people use indoors, I don't. How far from your location are your transmitters?

Jason

 

[jrapps]

I just got an HDTV and an 811 installed and am having some problems with OTA channels. I live in the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale market and am about 20 miles away from the towers. I bought a Terk HDTVi UHF/VHF antenna and placed it in my attic. I get all the VHF channels, but only 1 of 3 UHF channels. The weird thing is, the UHF channel I get is towards the upper end of the band. I figured if it was a lower channel, maybe I was just getting it because it was close to the VHF band, but that wasn't the case.

The really strange part is, I can't seem to get the signal strength meter in the 811 to work. Does anyone know if this is a common problem?

Jason

 

[Harry]

I just got an HDTV and an 811 installed and am having some problems with OTA channels. I live in the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale market and am about 20 miles away from the towers. I bought a Terk HDTVi UHF/VHF antenna and placed it in my attic. I get all the VHF channels, but only 1 of 3 UHF channels. The weird thing is, the UHF channel I get is towards the upper end of the band. I figured if it was a lower channel, maybe I was just getting it because it was close to the VHF band, but that wasn't the case.

The really strange part is, I can't seem to get the signal strength meter in the 811 to work. Does anyone know if this is a common problem?

Jason

The meter works.

~ Check to make sure you have the antenna hooked up correctly to the 811.
~ Try re-aiming the antenna.
~ Call the stations to see if they broadcasting DTV signals and at what power.
~ If the HDTVi is not amplified, try it with an amp.

At 20 miles away, you should get decent reception. My locals are 45 miles away and only two of the four are strong enough to reach me. (I have a large, outdoor antenna) One station is having trouble and their signal is intermittant right now. I was told that by next July, the stations are required to transmit their D-signals at full power.

 

[jdesisto]

OTA HD and Signal loss

I have indoor Zenith Silver Sensor up in my attic pulling OTA HD channels from Boston. I'm roughly 22 miles away from the transmitters, and getting anywhere between 65-90% signal strength. However I have a weird drop outs. Other than the PBS station, which is rock solid, NBC, CBS, and ABC all experience the same issue. When I switch to one of the OTA channels, almost immediately, the 811 displays signal loss for that station. If I wait a minute, 99% of the time it will pick the station up again with roughly 75% signal strength. And then at random times, complete signal loss will happen, and again after a minute, the station will resume.

Any suggestions? Would I benefit from a line amp? It's pretty annoying. BTW, I can't get even a sniff of the Boston FOX station for some reason either.

 

[Harry]

You could try an amp, be sure it encompasses the Digital channels. If it doesn't do any good, take it back!

 

[nippjas]

To prevent multiple threads from spawning into the same topic, I merged the "811 and OTA HD" and "OTA HD and Signal Loss" threads.

Jason

 

[ajohnson]

Make sure you've gone to http://antennaweb.org and checked what stations are near you and where they are. Click the "show digital stations only" option and print out the page. Try manually adding a few DTV channels by using the "Frequency Assignment" figure.

Bear in mind that these digital channels may not be broadcasting all the time. Most of mine only broadcast during prime time or weekends. The rest of the time they are just plain not there.

I did have to put a line amp on my setup, but I'm taking a cheap radio shack double bow-tie antenna, splitting the signal, running one to my 811 through a diplexer, the other direct to my 921. My locals are around 50 miles from me on a mountain.

 

[nippjas]

I like http://www.checkhd.com , although decisionmark is the backbone of both sites.

Jason

 

[b657319]

811 problem receiving locals by antenna

This may not be correct place to enter this but I am new to the forum.
I have new 811 hd unit installed last Friday. Trying to scan ota channels I have problems. There are three stations in area with hd broadcast and six with analog broadcast. My antenna was in use prior to new 811 install and gives excellent reception of the analog channels. With new 811 I scan in only one of the hd channels and one of the analog channels. They are channel 4, the hd and channel 5, analog. Nothing above scans in. Other channel numbers are 8, 13, 24, 41, 58 and 64, all analog. The other hd channel numbers are 32 and 40. Even if I add these through the menu and tune to them, I get nothing.
Any ideas?

 

[nippjas]

This may not be correct place to enter this but I am new to the forum.
I have new 811 hd unit installed last Friday. Trying to scan ota channels I have problems. There are three stations in area with hd broadcast and six with analog broadcast. My antenna was in use prior to new 811 install and gives excellent reception of the analog channels. With new 811 I scan in only one of the hd channels and one of the analog channels. They are channel 4, the hd and channel 5, analog. Nothing above scans in. Other channel numbers are 8, 13, 24, 41, 58 and 64, all analog. The other hd channel numbers are 32 and 40. Even if I add these through the menu and tune to them, I get nothing.
Any ideas?

Welcome to SatelliteGuys,

There are a lot of things to look at. What type of OTA are you using, indoor or outdoor, directional or omni, do you have a pre-amp and FM trap, do you have a signal amp, are you di-plexing your SAT and OTA on the same line, where are your digital towers in conjunction to the analogs (not all stations use the same tower), did you try to enter the station manually, is the antenna 75 ohm or a legacy 300 ohm, is the antenna's line of sight obstructed, is it aimed toward the desired stations correctly, are your digitals transmitting at full power, etc..etc.. To help better, some of these questions need to be answered. A good place to start is your zip-code and OTA equipment setup.

Jason

 

[b657319]

Jason:

I appreciate your reply. Thank you. I guess I'm trying to ask if I, at least, should not be able to use the existing outdoor antenna I have been using to get the local analog channels, run it through the 811 and still get them through the 811. I am very fortunate in that the big three networks here all have the analog and digital towers together. I run the coax into the tv directly, perfect picture on the analogs; run it through the 811 and only one comes through; nothing on the others. As I said, I get digital on channel 4, analog on channel 5 and nothign else comes through. The channel numbers here are 13, 24, 29, 41, 58 and 64, all analog. The digital channel numbers are 4, 32 and 40. Just seems strange to me that chan 4 and 5 come through; nothign above there gets through. What I'm sayign is the antenna arrangement I have has been near perfect on all local analogs, now it won't feed through the 811 above channel 5 frequency.

 

[nippjas]

Very strange, do you have an FM trap or attenuator on the line? The 811 has been disputed by many for having a poor analog tuner...I personally never had a problem with the analog, though I don't use it any longer for analogs since I have LiL and strong Digital OTA. Might be worth a try to hard-boot the 811 then try to map the channel manually. If it still doesn't work it is possible the 8VSB tuner module could be bad, call dish and get it exchanged. I will also mention, though it doesn't seem this is your issue, that Digitals and Analogs from the same station do not always broadcast on the same channel number assignment. Antennaweb.org or Checkhd.com will tell you the channel assignments so you can try mapping manually. Pages 28-32 of the manual explain how to manually map the channels.

And I am not trying to insult you, but I have seen people mistaken the UHF port for the 8VSB input. The UHF port is for the little UHF antenna for the remote control, the input marked 8VSB is the one for your OTA.

Good luck and I hope it works out,
Jason

 

[b657319]

Jason;
Thanks for working with me on my problem. It is resolved; I received the replacement from Dish today, plugged it in and all is well. Scanned in seven local analogs and four digitals. Sure wasn't easy getting them to send another dish though.
Bill

 

[b657319]

Sorry; should have said send new 811 receiver.
Bill

 

[nippjas]

Sorry; should have said send new 811 receiver.
Bill

Glad it all worked out...

Well welcome to 811hood and enjoy HD between BSOD's...

Jason