Mobile, AL locals problem?

[Pepper]

Somebody in the Mobile/Pensacola DMA, please verify for me that you are getting all the locals. For me, 7356 (WEIQ-42), 7357 (WSRE-23) and 7358 (WHBR-33) are missing, and 7355 (WJTC-44) is not mapping down into 44.

I have rebooted the receiver and run check switch multiple times with no effect.

I noticed a day or two ago that these channels which are now missing showed "no info" if I went more than an hour into the future in the guide.

This used to be a SD105 market but all the locals moved to 110 some time back. I don't have 105 connected anymore.

 

[Van]

Swapp the 105 and 110 ports on your switch and rerun your checkswitch.

 

[Pepper]

An hour on the phone with E* tech support. Only suggestion they had that I didn't already try was killing all power to the switch by disconnecting the power inserter and all receivers. At first glance that seemed to fix the problem, but some of the locals disappeared again before I got off the phone.

It should be noted that I currently have the DPP44-DP21 config with 119,110,61.5,129,121. The tech guy was amazed I was getting 5 satellite locations and said the receivers sometimes get "confused" with so many inputs and when it does it only affects locals. This config has been working fine for weeks but I can revert to DPP44 with just 119,110,61.5 tomorrow and see if that helps. Nothing useful on 129 or 121 anyway. The 5-sat config is just a "because I can" sort of thing.

Edit: Tried the kill power thing one more time, then ran check switch and let it download guide. Seems to be fixed (for now). All locals have complete guide info for the next week. Either that or the reauthorization "hit" he was sending finally got here.

 

[Mileskat]

Since switching from a 522 receiver to a 622 recently, I can no longer get channel WEIQ-42 out of Mobile, AL. I used to be able to get it either on 42 or 7356. It does show up in the guide, but when I try to access it, there is a message that says acquiring satellite signal, satellite 110 spotbeam 29 . . . signal has been lost and it doesn't acquire it.
I don't know if it is a 622 issue. My dish was changed from a super dish to a 1000.
I can get the other local channels. I'm about 45 miles east of Pensacola.

Mileskat

 

[Pepper]

mileskat, what do you see for signal strength on 110 spot 29 on the dish pointing screen? If I remember spot 29 is a bit north of spot 12 so you might be on the edge.

 

[Mileskat]

Sat 110 Spotbeam 29 shows "Not Locked - Name Not Acquired!" zero strength

Sat 110 Spotbeam 12 shows 106-108 strength.

Before I switched equipment last month, I could get Mobile PBS Channel 42, but not very good picture.

On another note, is macroblocking wide spread problem with the 622 on HD channels? I'm getting it now on various channels for just a second or so.

Mileskat

 

[Van]

It should be noted that I currently have the DPP44-DP21 config with 119,110,61.5,129,121. .

There is a reason why just such a configuration is not supported by dish because even though it may work for a while it will eventualy break down. Take out the dp-21 and rerun check switch, after doing a complete matrix wipe power deplete the system and rerun the test again and hope that your switch is not damaged, otherwise your gonna have to buy one and keep in mind that you did tell the tech support guy that you were doing an unapproved switch cascade and that is now on your records wich means that most likely your warranty on the switch is null and void.

Good luck

 

[Pepper]

There is a reason why just such a configuration is not supported by dish because even though it may work for a while it will eventualy break down. Take out the dp-21 and rerun check switch, after doing a complete matrix wipe power deplete the system and rerun the test again and hope that your switch is not damaged, otherwise your gonna have to buy one and keep in mind that you did tell the tech support guy that you were doing an unapproved switch cascade and that is now on your records wich means that most likely your warranty on the switch is null and void.

Well excuuuse me. The guy never said anything about it being unsupported, I just got the idea he had never encountered one before. Never have I heard anything about switch cascades being "unapproved" or voiding any kind of warranty. My equipment is more than a year old at this point anyway.

If it were not supported then why would they put it in the software. Undocumented maybe.

Regardless, I'm now running purely the DPP44 with 119,110,61.5,121. Will keep an eye on it to see what happens. I still think there's something screwy going on with guide data or the new E*10 spotbeams somewhere. Something that didn't exist last week.

**note to moderator, the longer this goes the more technical it gets. maybe it should be in the dish technical subforum - or The Pit **

 

[Pepper]

Sat 110 Spotbeam 29 shows "Not Locked - Name Not Acquired!" zero strength

Sat 110 Spotbeam 12 shows 106-108 strength.

Before I switched equipment last month, I could get Mobile PBS Channel 42, but not very good picture.

On another note, is macroblocking wide spread problem with the 622 on HD channels? I'm getting it now on various channels for just a second or so.

Mileskat

Several things are going on here that all work together to cause your problem.

1. A month ago WEIQ was still on 105. The "not very good picture" you speak of is due to the compression (E*'s fault) and crappy signal to begin with (WEIQ's fault). It's possible there is a problem with your 622 but I'm guessing the channel disappeared for you when WEIQ moved from 105 to 110, or when you switched from superdish to dish1000, whichever happened first. WEIQ did not move from 105 for some weeks after all the other locals had moved.

2. All the locals except WEIQ are now on transponder 12 on spotbeam "T07" which is centered in the gulf just south of Pensacola. This covers the entire DMA nicely.
- see here for map of beam center points

3. WEIQ is now on transponder 29 on the spotbeam "T11" which is centered about the middle of the Alabama/Mississippi border. The Pensacola area appears to be outside the beam "T11" coverage area, thus you get zero signal.
- see here for map of beam coverage areas

4. For all we know Dish might have done this on purpose. After all, WEIQ is such a weak station I doubt you were able to get it OTA to begin with, on the other side of Pensacola. With the more northerly centered spotbeam, they could eventually use just the one channel to serve almost the entire state since all Alabama PBS stations run the same content with nothing produced locally.

Regardless, if you want to see WEIQ, call up and complain and see what they tell you. Should be interesting.

 

[Van]

No offense was ment towards you pepper, sorry if it came off that way.

Engineering puts every conceivable switch and lnbf configuration possibility into its code and if you ever see a system thats getting corrupted beltone returns from a switch you might be surprised to see some of what I have such as 8 way sw-64 configuration with 6 sat slots. But even though the variables are in the software for diferent types of configurations it does not mean that it is supported, the engineers try out all sorts of configurations with all of them being long term studies and they put the test software on the sats so that the testing can be done in a real enviroment. The cascade configuration of of a dp-34 and dp-21 was officialy and hastily made very clear in a memo sent to all dns facilities that it is not to be done because of issues with equipment failure and burn out.

Pepper you can do any cascade you want to do but keep in mind that not all are supported and the best thing to do is to contact the engineering deparment if you want to try a certain configuration to see if it is supported and what issues they have encountered. With the dpp-44 I wouldnt atempt your configuration because the power inserter is supposed to be pushing 1.5 amps through the line, the only supported cascades are with 2 other dpp-44's pr 2 dp-34's.

 

[Pepper]

No offense taken. But I didn't get the memo since I'm not a dns facility. Is the engineering department one of the choices at 800-333-3474 or how do I contact them?

I am aware of the power inserter issue, I was still using the inserter on DPP44 output 1. The DP21 (two of them, input 1) were on outputs 3 and 4, with the 5th sat split into both DP21 input 2. So the power inserter is not getting anywhere near the non-standard part of the configuration.

 

[Van]

No on the engineering, you will have to go to advanced tech support and talk with someone there before you can get to engineering.

The power inserter supplies the whole switch with power but the other issue that can happen is the receiver will try to supply the switch's with current and can overload the switch's is what I have been told.

 

[Mileskat]

Pepper,

Thanks for the info on why I'm not getting WEIQ anymore and why the picture quality was poor when I did get it. I can live without it. It might be a long time before we can get HD locals from DISH in this area. We cannot get OTA HD without a TALL antenna.

Mileskat

 

[Pepper]

Van, just to let you know... I'm not certain if it's an issue with the 522 or the switches, but my locals have been trouble-free since changing back to the standard DPP44 config.