OTA channels are constantly searching for signal

[MikeD-C05]

It was released in Sept. of 2018 (going on 6 yrs), so you do not have the bad one I was referring to, and that puts me at a loss with your problem

The last time I purchased a dongle from amazon was in February of 2018. According to my Amazon account.

 

[NABRIL]

Can you connect a splitter and also feed the antenna to the TV as well as Dish? This is more for troubleshooting. Then, when you have the loss of signal message, switch over to the TV and see if it's having problems. I'm guessing, based on the "multiple channels" issue, it's probably cabling.

My next troubleshooting step (after hooking up the TV) would be getting a new dongle.

Excellent suggestions.
I have a contact at Dish CS that I'm hoping will get me a new dongle. Maybe.

 

[garyreno]

Hello
My hopper 3 has the usb OTA dongle connected to the usb 2.0 port and I'm using the dish-supplied ota antenna.

As of 2 weeks or so, while watching my local channels, i constantly get the black screen of "the ota signal has been lost for channel...", the image pixelates, and the signal returns. This repeats many many times.

I've rescaned the channels many times, but it keeps happening.

1. Is there a newer ota dongle? Mine is 6 or 7 years old.

2. Should it be plugged into the usb 3.0 port perhaps?

3. What can I do because it's annoying as hell, especially during NFL games. The NBC channel seems to be the main offender.

Thank you

EDIT.. I'm on the H367 software

I have the exact same problem. It started about 5 or 6 Hopper3 updates ago. Just downloaded H370 this morning and am keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[NABRIL]

The Dish subcontractor came this morning with a very dumbfounded look. Thankfully, he has had other service calls for ota issues, so he wasn't totally clueless.

He played with the settings, by scanning the locals, which was unnecessary. He moved the dongle to the usb 3.0 port, and no locals were found; so I told him to move it back. For a while the hopper scanned but didn't find any locals, and we began to sweat. After a reboot of the hopper, it scanned normally.

Unfortunately, my locals didn't pixelate right away while he was here, but thankfully the local fox channel lost its audio. I played a recorded show from. NBC that pixelated. He didn't have a dongle in his truck to replace.

Summary:
1. The antenna connection on the roof was fine and secure.
2. The connection at the hopper and dongle is fine.
3. That's it.

He made notes, and that was it.
While I knew that the visit wouldn't possibly fix anything, I don't know what's next. I will try to get a new antenna and/or dongle from Dish, but I doubt that I'll make progress since ota is not their focus.

 

[MikeD-C05]

Definitely not their focus. But Sling tv the sister company does have ota dvr like Tv Anywhere (4 tuner device) that you can hook your antenna up to and record and you don't have to subscribe to Sling tv, but you do need an account that has access to free channels and I have no issues with ota over it or my TABLO ota dvr. I think it is the dongles themselves that are just crapping out. They need one that isn't so sensitive that it flakes out so often.

But the newest ( white) 4 tuner TABLO works well and you can record all 4 channels at the same time. Like your own personal DISH Prime time Anytime. It doesn't require you to pay for guide information either like the older Analog TABLOS did.

www.tablotv.com

www.airtv.net

 

[sam_gordon]

Did you ever try hooking up the antenna feed to the TV and having it scanning for channels?