Do tuners have "strength" ? I thought they just converted the signal as they rec'd it, had the ability to filter 'noise', etc.
Hopper OTA Module - not as good as direct to TV - why?
- Thread starter bellevuecoug
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Tuners, themselves, don't have strength but you can overdrive the tuner. Think of it as a 50 psi water pressure driven into a 1/2 inch hose. The hose is gonna blow....
I'm not disputing that you can overdrive it. In this case, using your analogy, the 50psi is the signal and the TV tuner is a 1/2" hose while the Dish tuner is 1" (less pressure or strength).
That's an easy supposition to test. Get some 3db attenuators, and add one on the Dish tuner. See what happens. If you need more attenuation, you can stack them.
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Not sure what happened to my other posts but id be willing to pay your cost if you'd be willing to sell one of those my address is 104 South 10th Ave Paragould ar 72450 ,let me know .
I dont beleive offering to buy or sell is allowed on the forums, or to non pub members. I can not remember.. I just remember getting someone removing mine awhile back. Try PMing.
Have you even considered, if the bad channels are VHF or UHF, VHF has problems with digital broadcast UHF works much better. Plus the old analog channels were snowy, if the signal was bad. The new digital broadcast either has a picture or none at all. The broadcasters need to do something about the whole broadcast problem. First the FCC need to do away with VHF broadcast for a start.
I have had all three ota tuners with DISH over the last 18 years with DISH. The built in tuner like the 942, 921, 211k or 622 /722 dvrs were the first and they worked for the most part but sometimes had multi path rejection problems. But that was due to where I had my ota antenna. After Hurricane Rita took out my out door shed and satellite dishes on a pole in 05, I moved them to another part of the yard, where I could get clear shot at the sky and the local ota stations. the second tuner was the ota modules that you installed in the back of the 722k. Worked pretty good as long as your had a strong signal for your station. The third tuner has been the usb ota tuner. Now in my personal experience, it has been the weakest tuner and often will freeze up and then black out at certain parts of the day. Even on stations with 100% strength this happens. My antenna situation hasn't changed since 08 after Hurricane Ike hit and I re-installed my sat dishes and ota antenna. I have had two different usb ota tuners and they both suffer from the random freezes and black screens. So I have to conclude that the ota usb tuner is the weakest of all the ota tuners I have used. I know my tv gets better strength and stays locked at all times for ota channels ,so yeah this version of the ota tuner is the worst that DISH has come out with .
Before the Hopper arrived on the screen, I also had tuners for my 722ks. Those tuners never had a problem with my ota.
Remember when the Hopper USB tuners came out there was talk that they had to be installed so they were horizontal? I think that was from DISH themselves. How could tuner orientation have any effect on performance unless there was a serious shortcoming in the design of the unit? Never made any sense...
Remember when the Hopper USB tuners came out there was talk that they had to be installed so they were horizontal? I think that was from DISH themselves. How could tuner orientation have any effect on performance unless there was a serious shortcoming in the design of the unit? Never made any sense...
Yes I remember that and even still have the instructions saying to install them horizontally. My tuner is horizontal and it made no difference. They should of just kept the internal ota tuner or dual ota module that was proven to work . Would of cost a little more, but it would of worked more consistently. But DISH seems to be moving away from all ota guide data for sub channels as well , so I doubt that they will even care about improving the usb tuner or including a built in ota tuner in newer models.
I'm quite sure that this was to ensure that you didn't allow it to dangle down behind the reciever by the USB cable. Would result in poor connections or damage to the connector. Makes sense to me.
There is nothing to power on or off, it's a dongle. The signal is always there to send to the Hopper when it receives a request to tune to a OTA channel....
Just a FWIW in case it helps someone. I've used an amplified attic mounted antenna with the Dish OTA module for precisely 1 year now. Of the 18 or so channels identified in the original scan, I only saved 6 for actual use to avoid cluttering up the guide for stuff I'd never watch. Of those 6 saved channels, 4 showed signal strength of 100% and the remaining 2 of the mid-70's range and all was well. During the summer I noticed some slight degradation of signal strength which I attributed to the foliage on the trees having impact. Last week, with zero foliage to be found, signals dropped further and to the point I lost the 2 weaker channels. A new scan showed that of the original 18 channels found I now only had 6, all of which were lower strength that that originally.
After a bit of checking things out & troubleshooting delivered the culprit. I totally removed the powered amplifier & connected the antenna coax directly to the OTA module and to my surprise, not only were all the original channels present but the signal strength was now even better across the board and my 6 saved channels all @ 100% for the 1st time....ever! Bottom line, don't trust an amplifier - it may or may not be a good thing.
After a bit of checking things out & troubleshooting delivered the culprit. I totally removed the powered amplifier & connected the antenna coax directly to the OTA module and to my surprise, not only were all the original channels present but the signal strength was now even better across the board and my 6 saved channels all @ 100% for the 1st time....ever! Bottom line, don't trust an amplifier - it may or may not be a good thing.
