Last evening I lost several HD channels sourced from 61.5. I checked signal strength and it was non-existent for several TP's that were intended for the channels. I looked here and saw nothing posted so I decided to call Dish tech support.
First tech had me do the usual complete testing of check switch and finally a reboot of the VIP622. Still nothing. I was getting some TP's at 77-78 signal while a few were in the 50's and the ones for the lost channels were at 0.
I asked her if all tps were up on 61.5 and she said they were. We ended the call with her suggesting a tech come out to replace the receiver- OK, IMO, this is unacceptable since I have a married ext hard drive with lots of archives.
I decided to wait to see if anyone else posts any signal loss on 61.5. Nothing on satelliteguys and nothing on dbstalks which I wouldn't expect anyway.
Not more than 10 minutes after I end the phone call, the TP's signal strength came back up to 35 at first and then upto 68 and wouldn't you know the channels I was missing most of the evening and early morning were back.
Out of curiosity, I called tech support again and reported the signals back and all channels were on again. I asked this tech, whether they were having an outage. He said they sometimes do maintenance that can take several hours but "those guys never tell us when they are doing maintenance or if the system just goes out."
It seems to me that when they shut down some channels for testing or whatever, they should advise at minimum, their own people so they can advise us that the system is down for maintenance and will be back up soon. Consider the alternative that almost happened here- A service tech was to be sent out and a 622 swapped out making all my archived programs gone forever.
I am not a satellite service tech, so I stand corrected on this if need be. In the past when I had a dish problem such as an LNB fail or a switch fail or a power to the system fail, the outages were broad, not specific channels. At best I had one side of an LNB go out and this caused all the even tp's fail.
I know I would be pretty upset had they killed all my archived recorded shows and later discovered their tech were "secretly" shutting down various channels and the CSR's instructions are to schedule a replacement receiver. Letting their CSR's know what is going on seems much cheaper than swapping out many receivers especially when that would not fix the problem either.
First tech had me do the usual complete testing of check switch and finally a reboot of the VIP622. Still nothing. I was getting some TP's at 77-78 signal while a few were in the 50's and the ones for the lost channels were at 0.
I asked her if all tps were up on 61.5 and she said they were. We ended the call with her suggesting a tech come out to replace the receiver- OK, IMO, this is unacceptable since I have a married ext hard drive with lots of archives.
I decided to wait to see if anyone else posts any signal loss on 61.5. Nothing on satelliteguys and nothing on dbstalks which I wouldn't expect anyway.
Not more than 10 minutes after I end the phone call, the TP's signal strength came back up to 35 at first and then upto 68 and wouldn't you know the channels I was missing most of the evening and early morning were back.
Out of curiosity, I called tech support again and reported the signals back and all channels were on again. I asked this tech, whether they were having an outage. He said they sometimes do maintenance that can take several hours but "those guys never tell us when they are doing maintenance or if the system just goes out."
It seems to me that when they shut down some channels for testing or whatever, they should advise at minimum, their own people so they can advise us that the system is down for maintenance and will be back up soon. Consider the alternative that almost happened here- A service tech was to be sent out and a 622 swapped out making all my archived programs gone forever.
I am not a satellite service tech, so I stand corrected on this if need be. In the past when I had a dish problem such as an LNB fail or a switch fail or a power to the system fail, the outages were broad, not specific channels. At best I had one side of an LNB go out and this caused all the even tp's fail.
I know I would be pretty upset had they killed all my archived recorded shows and later discovered their tech were "secretly" shutting down various channels and the CSR's instructions are to schedule a replacement receiver. Letting their CSR's know what is going on seems much cheaper than swapping out many receivers especially when that would not fix the problem either.
