Not having much luck with my Mercury II so far
Poll - can anyone top this for worst first experience with FTA?
Thursday a week ago I went and bought an old TV from Craigslist to use out at the dish. I had been concerned that a TV that didn't have RCA jacks for video in wouldn't work, but several people here reassured me that the MercII has a TV out jack so I bought the $15 used TV with just an antenna in and no RCA jacks. I also got a 18" DirecTV dish from Craigslist (my "Old Primestar satellite dish wanted" Craigslist ad specifically said I didn't want DirecTV equipment but the lady who responded didn't know what she had so I thought what the heck maybe I'll find a use for this some day).
So yesterday I got my order from SatAv. Sometimes things go really well with electronic gadgets but yesterday wasn't one of those times, starting with unpacking the box. I had ordered the MercII which came with a 4X1 diseqc switch ($85 holiday special), and a motor. The switch was nowhere to be found. I poured all the peanuts out of the box, looked in the box the motor came in to see if maybe they stuck it in there, unpacked the MercII, but no switch. So I called SatAV - they were very nice about it and said they would mail me the switch.
On the same day I ordered the Merc I ordered a 36" dish from 3ABN. Yesterday I discovered there's a right way and a wrong way to do this. Silly me, I ordered the dish over the Internet. The correct way to order from them is to call them over the phone to place your order. The difference? If you order over the Internet, the friendly folks at the 3ABN accounting office sit on your order for about a week and a half before they send it to the satellite people. If I had ordered by phone, I was told, they would have shipped it out right away. Sounds logical to me. SatAV charged my credit card on Dec 19 and shipped my order the same day. 3ABN also charged my credit card on Dec 19 but nine days later hasn't managed to get the order from the accounting office to the shipping office. So anyway I had my spanking new receiver but only a DirecTV dish.
I drilled some holes in a hunk of plywood and bolted the 18-incher to that and took it outside, grabbed a 7/16" inch wrench and adjusted the dish so the mast was perpendicular to the plywood and set the elevation to 26 degrees, then plunked the whole thing onto a milk crate and pointed it in the general direction of 119W (247 on the compass). Set the MercII on another milk crate and the $15 TV on a third milk crate. Connected the LNB to LNB IN on the receiver and TV OUT on the receiver to ANT IN on the TV using coax. Plugged everything in, turned everything on, hit the menu button on the receiver remote.
And got nothing. Nada. Zilch. Just a snowy TV screen looking like it wasn't hooked up to anything. Tried changing channel from 3 to 4 and a bunch of other channels. Noticed that in addition to ANT IN the TV had a TV IN coax jack, so tried that. Changed the channel repeatedly. No dice. I'm not saying I couldn't receive TV from the satellite, I'm saying I couldn't even get the receiver menus to come up.
So I took the receiver back into the house. Hooked it up to the ANT IN on the TV in the kitchen. Hit menu button on the MercII remote, got "menu" on the receiver display, but still nothing but snow on the TV. Channel 3, Channel 4, still nothing. So next I tried yellow RCA video out from the receiver to yellow RCA video in on the TV. Now I got a menu on the TV (finally!) but it was very distorted looking and you couldn't really read the words very well. I brought up the list of satellites but couldn't read it well enough to tell which satellite was which (some of the names have Galaxy in them but you can't read the rest of it).
So I thought maybe I have a bad cable, so went down to the basement to get a different yellow RCA cable but had the same result. So this morning I tried a red-green-blue cable to go from component out on the receiver to component in on the TV - maybe a hair better but still can't really read the menus.
Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?
most units with a blind scan should be good for starting out.
