OTA Not Saving to Guide (SOLVED)

[scsttrooper]

Ok everyone. This is for informational purposes as I have already figured out the issue. Here is what happened.

I have two Wally receivers in my camper that each have an OTA. I travel quite a bit and have never had an issue until yesterday when I arrived in Kansas City, MO. When I scanned for OTA channels the adapter found 50 channels, the most I have ever seen! I told the receiver to add the channels but when I went to the guide all of the previous OTA channels were still there and none of the new ones.

First I tried to scan and add again but had the same results.

Then I tried to reset power, scan, add and had the same thing again.

Next I did a factory default of the Wally, scanned, added, and none of the channels added.

I called tech support (waste of time)

Then it hit me... what if 50 OTA channels are simply too many... I scanned again, this time I only added the -01 for each channel and BAM! It added them to the guide. I do not know yet exactly how many OTA channels the Wally supports but it is apparently less than 50.

While I am sure most everyone will not have this issue I wanted to post is just incase someone else ran into the same issue that I did.



Sent from my SM-N975U using the SatelliteGuys app!

 

[TheKrell]

My H3 guide has no issue with about 65 channels including subchannels. Just saying.

 

[HipKat]

My H3 guide has no issue with about 65 channels including subchannels. Just saying.

You people with all those channels. I only get 18 and 5 of them are PBS

 

[scsttrooper]

My H3 guide has no issue with about 65 channels including subchannels. Just saying.

I do not know about the H3. My experience is with the Wally receivers in my RV. The issue was repeatable (and fixable) on both of my Wally receivers.

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[sam_gordon]

I do not know yet exactly how many OTA channels the Wally supports but it is apparently less than 50.

But maybe the issue is not how many total you add but how many you add at one time.
If you really want to test, go through the same steps and select 25 channels. Does that work? If so, add another 25. If not, try adding 15 channels at once, etc, etc, etc.

 

[tpribors]

I ran into this and also concluded it was the number of channels. I trimmed my OTA list to drop the -01, Spanish and selling junk channels. There were some combinations that allowed more than 50 but some didn't. This was a couple of years ago and I had reported it on the old dish forum. I got a new two-tuner AirPlay unit and haven't tried to save all the channels (last time I got 65) since I guess I'm in the habit of trimming the list before I save it.

 

[tpribors]

But maybe the issue is not how many total you add but how many you add at one time.
If you really want to test, go through the same steps and select 25 channels. Does that work? If so, add another 25. If not, try adding 15 channels at once, etc, etc, etc.

You can't do that since an OTA scan is disruptive. It clears the list and starts all over. I wish there was a way to add a subchannel instead of having to do a whole rescan since rescanning here in Vegas runs the risk that whole groups will disappear (depends on conditions, antenna orientation, and lots of other factors)

 

[Yragha]

My Wally had 123 when I last had Dish.

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[pattykay]

You can't do that since an OTA scan is disruptive. It clears the list and starts all over. I wish there was a way to add a subchannel instead of having to do a whole rescan since rescanning here in Vegas runs the risk that whole groups will disappear (depends on conditions, antenna orientation, and lots of other factors)

If there was a reaction even stronger than "Love" available on this site, I would have given it to this post. Many of us have been wanting this feature for many, many years, ever since the original Hopper first came out. This is something that is so easy to do with ViP receivers, but apparently no version of the Hopper interface is capable of it, and likely never will be.

 

[sam_gordon]

If there was a reaction even stronger than "Love" available on this site, I would have given it to this post. Many of us have been wanting this feature for many, many years, ever since the original Hopper first came out. This is something that is so easy to do with ViP receivers, but apparently no version of the Hopper interface is capable of it, and likely never will be.

I was going to say, my ViP receiver handles single adds no problem.

 

[pattykay]

I was going to say, my ViP receiver handles single adds no problem.
View attachment 145756

Yep. That's why these days, I mostly just use my ViP222k and ViP211k. I only activate the Wally on the few days a week when I might need an additional receiver.

 

[tpribors]

Adds are problematic. The reason is how DTV works. For example, what you see as 8.2 on your digital display might actually be broadcasting on analog channel 19 (or any other mishmash the local area gets assigned.) So it's difficult to add a new channel group. For example, if you've scanned and never seen any 22.*, then adding 22.* is hard for the receiver to do without a scan since it doesn't know what analog channel is being used. However, if your channel block has recently had a new subchannel added, e.g., 13.1 and 13.2 were there, and you want to add 13.3, this ought to be, as they say, a SMOP (small matter of programming). If it were possible to add channels instead of resetting to null on a scan, then adding 22.* in the previous example would involve a rescan to locate 22 in the analog mix... The whole OTA subsystem seems to have been added as an afterthought.

 

[Jim5506]

You can't do that since an OTA scan is disruptive. It clears the list and starts all over. I wish there was a way to add a subchannel instead of having to do a whole rescan since rescanning here in Vegas runs the risk that whole groups will disappear (depends on conditions, antenna orientation, and lots of other factors)

They are not rescanning, they are only saving 25 of the 50 channels found on a scan, then going back and adding more from the channels found list - only one scan, multiple saving of found channels.

I usually do not save about 1/2 of my found channels anyway - mostly foreign language channels and constant sales pitch channels.

 

[pattykay]

Adds are problematic. The reason is how DTV works. For example, what you see as 8.2 on your digital display might actually be broadcasting on analog channel 19 (or any other mishmash the local area gets assigned.) So it's difficult to add a new channel group. For example, if you've scanned and never seen any 22.*, then adding 22.* is hard for the receiver to do without a scan since it doesn't know what analog channel is being used. However, if your channel block has recently had a new subchannel added, e.g., 13.1 and 13.2 were there, and you want to add 13.3, this ought to be, as they say, a SMOP (small matter of programming). If it were possible to add channels instead of resetting to null on a scan, then adding 22.* in the previous example would involve a rescan to locate 22 in the analog mix... The whole OTA subsystem seems to have been added as an afterthought.

I do not have a problem with requiring a re-scan to find new channels, or even to find new subchannels of an existing station. (Although, if you happen to know the actual frequency of the broadcaster you are looking for, the ViP receivers do have an Add Channel feature to only scan that one frequency instead of doing a full scan.) What I object to is the complete erasure of the old list every time you do a scan. This process does not take into account the fact that some OTA stations may not come in all of the time, due to changing atmospheric conditions, or that some users rotate their antennas to pick up different stations from other cities. That does not mean that we do not want the other channels to remain on the list, just because they are not currently coming in at this specific moment. Another possible scenario would be someone in an RV who frequently travels back and forth between two different locations. It would be handy to be able to scan in all of the channels from both locations and leave them in the list. That way, when you arrive at the other location, all of your OTA locals are already in the guide without needing to do a re-scan first. The point is: if we have reason to believe that the OTA signal will return for any stations in the list that are not currently coming in, then we should be allowed to leave those stations in the list, without having that prevent us from being able to do a scan to find any newly-added channels.

Having used ViP receivers for many years, I can see one potential drawback of allowing long lists of OTA stations in the guide, especially if those stations are coming from multiple markets. It can lead to very long wait times while downloading the program guide. That may be why Dish is not allowing us to keep accumulating various OTA stations in our guide on the newer receivers. However, a longer guide download is a small price to pay for the convenience of being able to keep access to the guide listings for all of our OTA stations. Also, the Hopper operating system is supposedly so much faster than the ViP system, that any additional wait time would probably be negligible, anyway.

 

[sam_gordon]

Adds are problematic. The reason is how DTV works. For example, what you see as 8.2 on your digital display might actually be broadcasting on analog channel 19 (or any other mishmash the local area gets assigned.) So it's difficult to add a new channel group. For example, if you've scanned and never seen any 22.*, then adding 22.* is hard for the receiver to do without a scan since it doesn't know what analog channel is being used. However, if your channel block has recently had a new subchannel added, e.g., 13.1 and 13.2 were there, and you want to add 13.3, this ought to be, as they say, a SMOP (small matter of programming). If it were possible to add channels instead of resetting to null on a scan, then adding 22.* in the previous example would involve a rescan to locate 22 in the analog mix... The whole OTA subsystem seems to have been added as an afterthought.

There's a number of things wrong with this. One thing you got right is the displayed channel number might not (and probably doesn't) match the actual broadcast frequency. Technically, there is no "analog 19" or "Digital 21". The channel numbers just represent a frequency range. For example, "channel 19" is referring to 500-506Mhz. and "channel 21" is 512-518 MHz. What is broadcast inside those frequencies can be analog or digital.

Now, all you're really doing when you scan is tell your receiver "look at the various frequencies (channels) and if there's a readable signal there, store it in a chart". Some tuners, whether on TVs or STBs, will allow you to add individual channels. Many (most) do not.

Now, once your receiver tunes in a digital signal, part of that digital transmission is a PSIP table. This tells the receiver (among other things), how many subchannels there are, and what channel number to display. So, it is not "hard" for a receiver to add a channel number, it just needs to be able to tune in the channel and add it to it's chart. As mentioned, some receivers allow you to do this on a one off basis, others require a complete scan. Whether it's doable is, to use your words, a SMOP.

The reason it's "easy" to add a subchannel (a .3 for example) is because the receiver already knows where to read the PSIP table for a given broadcast, and that PSIP table has the information for the added subchannel.

 

[pattykay]

There's a number of things wrong with this. One thing you got right is the displayed channel number might not (and probably doesn't) match the actual broadcast frequency. Technically, there is no "analog 19" or "Digital 21". The channel numbers just represent a frequency range. For example, "channel 19" is referring to 500-506Mhz. and "channel 21" is 512-518 MHz. What is broadcast inside those frequencies can be analog or digital.

Now, all you're really doing when you scan is tell your receiver "look at the various frequencies (channels) and if there's a readable signal there, store it in a chart". Some tuners, whether on TVs or STBs, will allow you to add individual channels. Many (most) do not.

Now, once your receiver tunes in a digital signal, part of that digital transmission is a PSIP table. This tells the receiver (among other things), how many subchannels there are, and what channel number to display. So, it is not "hard" for a receiver to add a channel number, it just needs to be able to tune in the channel and add it to it's chart. As mentioned, some receivers allow you to do this on a one off basis, others require a complete scan. Whether it's doable is, to use your words, a SMOP.

The reason it's "easy" to add a subchannel (a .3 for example) is because the receiver already knows where to read the PSIP table for a given broadcast, and that PSIP table has the information for the added subchannel.

Just to expand on this, some TV tuners automatically add any new subchannels when you tune to a channel on that frequency, without needing to do a scan or a manual add. It would be nice if the Dish receiver OTA tuners could do that. It would eliminate the need for a re-scan in most cases where nothing else has changed (in other words, no repack) and you just want to add a new subchannel of an existing station.

 

[mwdxer1]

If there was a reaction even stronger than "Love" available on this site, I would have given it to this post. Many of us have been wanting this feature for many, many years, ever since the original Hopper first came out. This is something that is so easy to do with ViP receivers, but apparently no version of the Hopper interface is capable of it, and likely never will be.

Just another reason to stay with my VIP receivers. Yes, I can scan an individual channel with the VIP. In fact I have had to use that on occasion, as a complete scan has missed a channel and I have to add it in separately. So far we have 16 OTA offerings. July 28th the stacking starts in Portland as the NextGen kicks on, so we will be getting another 9 or 10 channels. I wonder how many will have guides? The ReCast I am sure will have guides for all. It updates within an hour or two.

 

[pattykay]

Just another reason to stay with my VIP receivers. Yes, I can scan an individual channel with the VIP. In fact I have had to use that on occasion, as a complete scan has missed a channel and I have to add it in separately. So far we have 16 OTA offerings. July 28th the stacking starts in Portland as the NextGen kicks on, so we will be getting another 9 or 10 channels. I wonder how many will have guides? The ReCast I am sure will have guides for all. It updates within an hour or two.

I usually rely on the scan to find and add any new channels to my ViP receivers. However, there is a slight flaw with the ViP scan. If it finds a station with a weak signal that is already on the list, it will sometimes delete that station (or maybe just an individual subchannel, seemingly at random) from the list. At least this type of deletion by the scan only occurs when there actually is a signal being found, unlike the Hopper scan's deletions. This is when I use the Add Channel feature of my ViP receivers, to bring back the missing station or individual subchannel that was deleted by the scan.