FS: VIP Dish 211k

[Dee_Ann]

good to know that the switch made it safely


the test card on there is back when there were sats being used at 105,110,119,121,129 and 148. It was easy for Dish customer service reps to check if you could see a satellite. I forget what channel it is now but 129 use to be 9901 so they had you type in 9901. If it didnt show up then 129 wasnt working. There is a channel that says "you have a dish 500" which means you can see 110

On the 2nd pic I was worried you didnt have all the channels but I see "my channels" listed which would be the freebies. If you hit the "guide" button it will cycle through all, my channels, HD and favorites which you can set up (so you coudl remove those shopping/ppv channels)

Yes, I was looking at Lyngsat for any channels that are ITC on the three satellites so that I could confirm stuff and I found that one about "You're on 129"..
I was going to try to find one for 110 & 119 but the wind was killing me in that paper thin wind breaker so I called it quits.

I did notice, as you mentioned, that pressing the guide button did cycle me through different lists of stuff and one of them was strictly HD channels. I'll make heavy use of this feature..

One thing I'm curious of and can not find anywhere I've looked is how many channels can you add to a favorites list and can you ~hide~ unwanted channels totally?
Such as the sports channels. I have no use in the universe for them and I don't want to be bothered with even seeing them or knowing of their existence. It would be uber cool if I could just hide them completely.
I read you can hide PPV channels and channels that are um, adult in nature. I would hope you can flag channels that ~I~ decide are undesirable and wish to not have them in my face 100 times a day.
I suppose if that's not possible then I'll have to make do with the favorites list. I just hope the list isn't too limited in capacity.

I guess I'll find out next week. That is if it will ever quit flippin raining! I can't get anything done outside like this!

Yep.... http://dishuser.org/at250.php This is what I'm going for..

 

[Mr Tony]

One thing I'm curious of and can not find anywhere I've looked is how many channels can you add to a favorites list and can you ~hide~ unwanted channels totally?

yes you can. You can set up favorites which would only show the channels you want. But if you want to completelly remove channels from ALL lists (even "All") here is what you do (now my memory may be foggy)
go into locks (#5)
now if it says there is a password on it (from when I owned it) the password is 0000.
select "channel locks"
go through the list and select the channels you want to remove. PPV, porn, sports, shipping, whatever
Then there are options for "hide adult", "hide PPV" and "hide locked". Make sure all are selected
Then you lock the system (#3)..set a password and voila...channels wont show in the list at all (unless you unlock the system). The locks dont affect any other use of the receiver

I suppose if that's not possible then I'll have to make do with the favorites list. I just hope the list isn't too limited in capacity.

I dont think there is a limit of how many you can put in for favorites

 

[Mr Tony]

Yes, I was looking at Lyngsat for any channels that are ITC on the three satellites so that I could confirm stuff and I found that one about "You're on 129"..

Dish receivers can see more than just ITC. The only ITC channel (using the FTA setup) is 101. But Dish has "fixed key" channels like the freeview channels. Right now if you go through the "my channels" list other than PPV and porn channels the rest there should be viewable. Like the knockoff shopping channels.

 

[Dee_Ann]

yes you can. You can set up favorites which would only show the channels you want. But if you want to completelly remove channels from ALL lists (even "All") here is what you do (now my memory may be foggy)
go into locks (#5)
now if it says there is a password on it (from when I owned it) the password is 0000.
select "channel locks"
go through the list and select the channels you want to remove. PPV, porn, sports, shipping, whatever
Then there are options for "hide adult", "hide PPV" and "hide locked". Make sure all are selected
Then you lock the system (#3)..set a password and voila...channels wont show in the list at all (unless you unlock the system). The locks dont affect any other use of the receiver

I dont think there is a limit of how many you can put in for favorites

Perfect!

Dish receivers can see more than just ITC. The only ITC channel (using the FTA setup) is 101. But Dish has "fixed key" channels like the freeview channels. Right now if you go through the "my channels" list other than PPV and porn channels the rest there should be viewable. Like the knockoff shopping channels.

Ah ok.. I'll see if I can plug it in tomorrow and browse the lists that it found. I don't have a wire to the dishes yet but maybe I can explore it a little, just mess with the menus and stuff without it being hooked up yet.
IF it will let me do that. That would be really nice if I could go through there and pre-set all those channels so when I do have it activated I'll be one step ahead of the game..

Thank you again..

 

[Mr Tony]

Ah ok.. I'll see if I can plug it in tomorrow and browse the lists that it found. I don't have a wire to the dishes yet but maybe I can explore it a little, just mess with the menus and stuff without it being hooked up yet.
IF it will let me do that. That would be really nice if I could go through there and pre-set all those channels so when I do have it activated I'll be one step ahead of the game..

you will need to see a satellite to get past the "searching for signal" screen. Also it will only load channels for whatever satellite you can see. When I first set mine up I had 129 so all I saw was a couple Public Interest channels and my locals in HD

 

[dfergie]

Welcome to the darkside Dee_Ann ... )(I have C-band, Dish and Directv)

 

[Dee_Ann]

you will need to see a satellite to get past the "searching for signal" screen. Also it will only load channels for whatever satellite you can see. When I first set mine up I had 129 so all I saw was a couple Public Interest channels and my locals in HD

Sigh.. Oh well.. Just more incentive to get it done. Where's Larry the Cable Guy when you REALLY need him??



Look what I have to deal with! It's been raining every two days or sometimes every other day.
The yard is a swamp. I'm afraid I'll run into Shelby and his hand cannon out in my back yard!

I need to go buy some rain boots tomorrow because one way or the other, I've got to get that wire run through ~this week~ !!
I want to try to get it activated next Monday, or at least next week!

Darn this rain!

 

[Dee_Ann]

I'm good to go now!



I now have some boots and some non-DEET mosquito repellent so now I can get out in the muck aka The Swamp and get that wire ran.
Flippin RAIN every other day is really making it hard to get anything done outside. And the skeeters..

I hope to get things wrapped up soon...

 

[chapelrun]

Dee,

I'm just curious, with 1 meter (or close to 1 meter dishes) with one on each satellite - - - what kind of signal strength are you getting on 110, 119 and 129?

 

[Dee_Ann]

OMG...

I will NOT do this again!

It took me TWO HOURS to get that fish tape through the tubes! It went all the way through to the other end but came to a dead stop when it hit the 90 degree elbow.
NOT cool. I pulled the tape out and re-ran it a dozen times, then tried it from the other direction a dozen times. No go......

I finally had to make a wire hook out of some super strong wire to fish out the fish tape and that took like half an hour. It was a giant pain in the backside!

I did however pull two strings through and left one string in the tube for future use.










I had to soak myself in skeeter spray because they were BAD out there. The yard is a nasty, nasty swamp but thankfully I had my new boots to save me from that.
I still ended up getting my clothes totally muddy and had my arms torn up by my rose bushes which are smack dab in the way of the tube where it comes out of the ground next to the house.

Having had to fight this thing has made me think about pulling the whole thing up and putting all new 3" tubes underground with different doo-dads on it for the wires to stick out of.
The biggest change will be using elbows that aren't such sharp angles like the ones that are in there now. That's why the fish tape wouldn't go through. I saw different elbows on Lowe's that are truly curved so when I push the tape or wires through they will follow the curve and not just stop dead in a sharp 90 degree corner. I'm not going to do it anytime soon but when I get around to it it's going to be worlds better than this messed up thing Mr. Genius built and left for me to fight with.

So After I got the wire through the tube I called it quits for the day. Tomorrow, IF it's not raining, I'll run the wire into the house and put the connectors on the ends. Then I'll be good to go.
My extra remote controls came in two days early (for future expansion) so about all that's left is to call Dish next week and set things up. The disk for the DVR arrived as well. I've got 100% of all the physical parts on hand now and I'm soooo close to having it all going.. Next week when my financial situation gets it's monthly boost, I'm calling Dish and getting it going..



Thank goodness the ~worst~ of this is behind me now... Whew!

 

[Dee_Ann]

Dee,

I'm just curious, with 1 meter (or close to 1 meter dishes) with one on each satellite - - - what kind of signal strength are you getting on 110, 119 and 129?

Oh gosh, I don't recall, when I set it up last weekend I had the tuner out in the yard on a barrel, I didn't pay much mind to the meter that the tuner can do.
I should have it wired inside the house tomorrow and then I'll see if I can get some screen shots of the tuner screens at that time.

I can say though that the birddog meter was on fire! It was showing like 2,000% (just kidding!) on each satellite..
But Iceberg says that's not the best way to tweak the dishes, that I really need to tweak them using the tuner meter instead.
I totally believe him and will do that next time we have some cool, dry weather. Right now I dare not take a power cord out there, it's very wet out there today..

 

[Dee_Ann]

Dee,

I'm just curious, with 1 meter (or close to 1 meter dishes) with one on each satellite - - - what kind of signal strength are you getting on 110, 119 and 129?

I saw on the news that it's going to rain like crazy for DAYS so I said to heck with it and went outside and finished all the wiring. I just balanced the tuner on a stack of junk, I don't have the new cabinet setup yet so this is temporary.
But anyway, I got some numbers for you.


110 is a 1m, 119 is a .96m and 129 is a 1.2m



I noticed that it won't let me see HD stuff yet, it tells me I need to call Dish to activate HD even though they have some free HD previews going on.

I guess until I have it activated there aren't too many things I can do with it for now.
But I'm ready to go now. Just waiting on finances.. Soon...

 

[Mr Tony]

129 is a little low. I was pulling mid-upper 70's on transponders 17-32 (1-16 are spotbeams so most will show 0) with a 36"

as for the others
[youtube]95SYdjRVCR0[/youtube]

 

[Dee_Ann]

129 is a little low. I was pulling mid-upper 70's on transponders 17-32 (1-16 are spotbeams so most will show 0) with a 36"

as for the others
[youtube]95SYdjRVCR0[/youtube]

LOL!!! That's funny!!!

I guess that means I'm doing ok with 110/119 then..

I still need to do what you said about tweaking 129. I just aimed it with the Birddog and I saw that I could move the dish several inches in any direction and it was still showing 99% on the meter.
I'm sure that when I get out there and employ your suggested method of alignment I should be able to do much better. I mean dang, that dish is HUGE compared to standard issue DN dishes.

Actually I want to try to tweak all three dishes using your suggestion, I mean why not? Might as well go for the gold..

 

[Mr Tony]

Dee
a very small tweak of 129 should bring up the numbers. 50's and low 60's is what a smaller dish gets (I showed those on a Directv Phase III). Elevation might be a smidge high (or low)

 

[Mr Tony]

LOL!!! That's funny!!!

I guess that means I'm doing ok with 110/119 then..

yep

I still need to do what you said about tweaking 129. I just aimed it with the Birddog and I saw that I could move the dish several inches in any direction and it was still showing 99% on the meter.
I'm sure that when I get out there and employ your suggested method of alignment I should be able to do much better. I mean dang, that dish is HUGE compared to standard issue DN dishes.

thats the drawback of DBS (high powered) sats. You can be off by a bit and still pull huge numbers on a meter. The Dish meter is very stingy now so even a little move will make a big difference

Actually I want to try to tweak all three dishes using your suggestion, I mean why not? Might as well go for the gold..

if you got the time and energy go for it. Worst case is signal goes down

 

[navychop]

Welcome to the darkside Dee_Ann ... )(I have C-band, Dish and Directv)

AH, the dark side of the force is STRONG with this one!

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I think this is the longest Classifieds Ad thread on SatelliteGuys EVER.

 

[Dee_Ann]

oops.. malfunction..

 

[Dee_Ann]

Well, it's Saturday morning and it's raining cats and dogs!
It was raining so hard that the noise (metal roof) woke me up many hours too early.
So I decided to try a little experiment.


I went into the tuner menu and got the signal strength for every transponder on all three satellites, during heavy rain.


110 and 119 did pretty darn well. 129, not so much.


Column 1 = transponder number, column 2 = 110, column 3 = 119, column 4 = 129
Some transponders showed zero signal, some transponders like on 119, I couldn't access, it just skipped a bunch of them up high. No clue why.


Also, the rain was in waves, there was a line of very heavy storms passing over at the time. It would pour hard for a few minutes then slack off for a few minutes then back to heavy rains. This went on for about 30 minutes.
At one point, I totally lost 129, I was getting zero on the entire satellite. So I waited 20 minutes and tried again, it was still raining, just not pouring heavy like earlier. I got signals this time but they seem pretty weak.
I can see for certain that I need to do some serious tweaking. I'm going to do as Iceberg suggested and tweak all three dishes using the tuner rather than the bird dog.
I guess the question is, should I use weak or strong transponders to tweak by? Or is there a certain one that I should use for some technical reasons?

1	77	68	0
2	75	24	0
3	76	73	0
4	50	62	0
5	69	53	0
6	71	87	0
7	62	64	0
8	70	78	37
9	64	72	8
10	62	74	0
11	67	59	10
12	51	80	0
13	55	55	0
14	70	63	0
15	63	56	0
16	69	75	0
17	54	53	28
18	23	67	51
19	75	55	29
20	0	68	50
21	70	55	39
22	77		48
23	24		30
24	85		48
25	27		27
26	0		49
27	36		18
28	?		51
29	0		20
30	?		50
31	?		21
32	?		52