OTA problems

[pete424]

I have had my 622 for a little over a month and up till tonight everything has been fine. I have the HD package but my locals are not available via satellite so I have an attic mounted antenna. It has been working great but tonight I noticed on the NBC OTA a very choppy, jerky picture. When I switch over to the sat, non HD feed it is fine. My signal strength is in the 80s and the other OTA channels are fine. Can this be a problem with the OTA tuner or a transient problem from the local station?

 

[KE4EST]

It could be either really. Try resetting the 622 the next time it happens and see if that clears it up.

 

[pete424]

When you say reset, do you mean unplug it? Is that essentially a reboot? I tried that and it made no difference.

 

[cebbigh]

Push in (and hold) the power button for approx 10 seconds (until you hear a whirring sound). This is an essential catch all fix that you will find very useful for most problems like this.

 

[sprintcarcrazy]

Are you using an amplified antenna ? How close is this station ?

 

[pete424]

I am not using an amplified antenna. I am about 23 miles from the stations tower. I will try restting the receiver.

 

[Sammy033]

Just to isolate the problem, if your TV has a tuner plug the antenna directly into that. If the problem remains then its probably the antenna.

23 miles is pretty far but if the terrain allows it try a pair of rabbit ears just to see what it does and if the same problem remains. I cant imagine it would work very well that far away. But wont hurt to try. If nothing else, try it just to show that a 20 year old antenna can often still work just as good if not better as those "HDTV-ready" ones sold today.

 

[bgsmallwood]

I have the same problem with 1 and only 1 OTA station on my Vip211. About 3 times per minute the picture freezes for a second or so and sometimes I get the error 739 about loss of signal even thought the signal strength is in the 98% range.

This all started about one month ago when Dish pushed the L345 software version out to the 211's. Before that it worked perfectly.

If I disconnect the coax from the antenna and plug it into the TV in order to use the builtin digital tuner I get perfect reception, just not on the 211 and only after that software version.

Dish sent me a replacement 211 and it does the same thing. I am almost certain it was caused by that software update that processes OTA signals differently than the previous versions.

Did Dish recently push out a new software version for the 622 that might be doing the same thing?