Professional Installers out there....I'm Desperate for Help

[Jared Twomey]

Ok, now that the tree is gone, all the wire has been replaced, the receivers have been replaced.... I'd say it's time to completely replace the dish, reflector and LNB..

I'd call the company that put it in and tell them to put a brand new dish in, I personally either think that the installer either didn't swap out the LNB like he said, or the dish has some kind of flaw, maybe a dent or something throwing off your signal.

I hate that you have been having this much trouble with your system bill, unfortunately, this is the kind of install companys, and installers that give satellite a bad rep.

 

[SMCushion]

If the installer was wrong about the tree as he did not check the LNB. Who is liable for the cost of cutting the tree?.

 

[wobbie]

Dragon, the point that I was trying to make was that it is not a Line of Sight issue. This guy went out and dropped a tree for no reason at all. Bill, as I have mentioned, call DirecTV and demand that you be reimbursed for you troubles, then call a local retailer and ask them to come out. DirecTV's HSP technians are a joke..... which by now you have figured out. If you would like.... I could send you a phase three dish kit and you could replace the dish and LNB your self. All I would want is the cost to ship it. I'm in Nebraska. P.M me if your interested. Have you given any thought about Dish Network???

 

[dragon002]

good lord wobbie, he is having enough problems LOL

he gets dish and the poor guy might off himself

talk about going from the frying pan into THE BLAST FURNACE

lol

dragon

 

[TYORK]

If the installer was wrong about the tree as he did not check the LNB. Who is liable for the cost of cutting the tree?.

I say the installer from what I have seen in the past He should have Liability Insurance that he can turn it on. If not he should have to pay for it out of his pocket.

t

 

[FlyingSaucer]

sKEPTICAL

Does D* even work that far north?
Especially the HD satellite?
Does Bill have neighbors with D*?
Is this whole thread a hoax?

 

[wobbie]

Dragon, the poor guy is having enough trouble and might off himself switching to Dish. I have a feeling that he's not the type to off himself... I'm guessing that he'll probably die of old age by the time DirecTV and thier $9.00 an hour HSP techs figure his problem out. You could'nt pay me to have DirecTV in my house......

 

[Bill1955]

Dragon, the poor guy is having enough trouble and might off himself switching to Dish. I have a feeling that he's not the type to off himself... I'm guessing that he'll probably die of old age by the time DirecTV and thier $9.00 an hour HSP techs figure his problem out. You could'nt pay me to have DirecTV in my house......

We've actually had Directv for more than 10 years and have always been very pleased with it........and NO THIS IS NOT A HOAX....God I wished it was!!!!!! I think I WILL die of old age (or a fall off the roof carrying this fool dish around or I might even be put away by my wife who is pretty disgusted with the whole thing........including watching that signal meter) before its fixed. BTW....The HD Channels that we do get come in perfectly, we're not THAT far north.

 

[dishjockey]

Any updates Bill? Did that address help?

 

[GWHD]

The connection between the Dish and the grounding block should be exterior. Run a coax cable between the grounding block at the base of your house through a window to the closest receiver. Select round dish from the menu installation, repeat for oval-2, and last select auto-detect and report each result for odd/even TP's.

All said, there is an installation issue with legacy Oval-3's that only had two LNB's for 101 & 119 and have a bulit in multi-switch in the dish arm. Latter subs / installers tried to upgrade and install a SAT-C kit which many failed to install correctly because they tried to use a standard Radio Shack / Monster Cable 2.4G splitter / combiner or mis-connected cables from the LNB's to the D* provided combiner,, (typically Terk). Part of the question to resolve this issue is to identify if each LNB on the dish is removable or the LNB is an integrated component attached to the dish.

Not all multi-switches support cascading. This would be if you have a current D* Oval-3 with an integrated multi-switch, and you where using a non-cascading capable multi-switch behind it. The other issue reported earlier, is an attempt to split one coax from the satellite to two receivers using a standard Radio Shack / Monster cable splitter / combiner which will not work. If you are using diplexors to merge DBS & OTA, you need to report that as well.

Lastly, early cable subs / providers installed 900 MHZ splitters behind the face plate and cable installation and where daisy chained from room to room. If you have a legacy cable splitter lurking in your home, pull off the face plates, and check the attic and basement.

 

[Bill1955]

Any updates Bill? Did that address help?

Dishjockey, It will help(thanks again), I"m composing alittle note right now.....I've had a busy week at work and its been raining and windy here all week and I just haven't had a chance to do much. I did call the installer back just to inform them that taking the tree didn't do a thing, that was on Monday and they promised to get right back to me that afternoon with what they would do.................SO FAR I haven't heard a word from them......such good customer service wouldn't you say?

 

[AeroGuy]

Just Curious

Bill,

I am not familiar with the northern regions of Maine. Do you have any neighbors in the area that are receiving Directv service without difficulty? The reason I ask is with regard to the "footprint" topic raised earlier in the thread. The 119 satellite is the farthest west of the three satellites. I believe the 119 satellites uses a reflector to transmit its signals. Typically as a user's location is moved farther from the center of the transmitted beam the polarization purity degrades (I believe the even and odd transponders use the two different circular polarizations of the transmitted electric-field.) Anyway, the point I am building to is; can anyone receive 119 well in your region.

One last thought, given that your location may be stretching the limits of the polarization purity of the transmitted signal, any deformations in the dish will exacerbate the problem, so try a new dish.

good luck.

 

[PMKS]

Well I dunno if I can help, but here goes....

I had a similar problem 4 months ago when I got my first HD receiver ( DTC210 ) and re-wired my dish set-up: I got only the odd transponders on 119. Didn't get the even transponders on 110 or 119. First I tried replacing the LNB, no fix, next the Multi-Switch, fixed it.

I use the older type oval dish with the 3 separate LNB's and the 4 x 4 multi-switch with the Sat B / Sat C combiner before it, so replacing individual components was easier than the "all-in-one" dishes.

You could always buy a separate Multi-Switch and run multiple dishes, maybe try a 24" or 36" dish for the 119 sat if LOS is a potential problem. I used to use an old 36" Primestar dish ( with a D* LNB rigged to it ) for the 101 sat to help with rain fade.

Years ago when I got my first Multi-Sat DirecTV receiver; a DRD420RE, I ran a single LNB 18" dish for 119 and used a Hughes 2x1 Multi-Switch. Some people still use multiple dish set-ups with no problems.

Do you still have a single LNB 18" dish laying around? You could always aim it at the 119 sat only and hook up a older receiver to it and see if it gets both even and odd transponders. I've done this with a older DRD222RD receiver just to see if it could be done.

The downside is that most of my above options involve you spending more time, effort, and $$$ that you shouldn't be if you had better installers who would trouble-shoot stuff.

 

[SatinstallerhatesVOOM]

Well after reading 8 pages of this I am exhausted! Bill, have they replaced the dish yet? If not try it. I feel sorry for you man! Your installers sound like they really suck! The simple things like skew, receivers, cable have been done. I also think that in that area you may be on the edge of the 119 footprint which may require a larger dish. Good luck!

 

[madisondish]

SORRY MY CAT JUMPED ON THE KEYBOARD ARRGH

1.you need 17/18v for even transponders- when you check the voltage at the lnb with a signal-volt meter it may show 18v, but this can be an misleading. when i test the voltage at the lnb i place a dummy load (200 ma at 18v) across my meter. My meter displays current usage and volts togeather- so i know what load is present. My point is the reciever puts out more volts with no load- i see 20v+ right at the reciever back with no load, 18-19 w/ load. maybee your reciever isnt putting out enough juice- also the reciever has to send a 22k tone up the line to flip the multiswitch (built in your dish)to 110/119 side could it be possible that when it sends up that tone something is wrong and shorting,either in the dish or reciever but only with the tone present?


2 are you running 1 line (and only 1 line, nothing else connected) to the dish when you were performing the walk around test on the roof- also were you trying different recievers during this test??

3 i would try 1 line throgh a window with nothing elso connected (pull of the messenger ground by the base of the dish-if your tec connected it) and different recievers,

I was at a similar nightmare service issue and saw 1 bad reciever make 2 others act verry funny. the bad reciever was sending up some nasty signal and was causing the lnb to switch on its own randomly,by switch i mean the recievers would loose signal then reboot, but only show 119 spanish channels- previous tecs replaced lnb's (2 or 3 service calls), i pulled every reciever from the wall andthe dish and found out 1 reciever was doing it- weird

 

[Bill1955]

Houston.............WE HAVE A SIGNAL!!!!!!!!

Well I am on the road and am borrowing someone's computer, so I'll post a more detailed explanation on Wednesday, But I had to let you all know...........I have signals on ALL TRANSPONDERS!!!! A replacement dish and LNB did the trick!!!!!!!! Soooooo, If they had just listened to us a month ago, this would never have taken 8 PAGES of communications with you guys........I'll write exactly what happened and what we did later..........but I just had to say THANK YOU, THANK YOU.........you provided some very valuable information and I appreciate every one of you that answered me and took the time to be concerned.................Thanks again..........wait till you hear..........The rest of the story.......................Bill

 

[beast37799]

glad everything works now

 

[TYORK]

glad to here you are going agian Bill. can't wait to hear the rest of the story.


tyork

 

[uboatcmdr]

Congrats!!! Glad to hear your up & running.

 

[Bill1955]

I obtained thru a confidential source (THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!) the email address of the regional DO for Directech.......and wrote to him. He was VERY RESPONSIVE and VERY Disturbed about our installation. It was less than 4 hours later that I received a call from an independent installer in our area. Directech had contacted him and asked him to take care of it. I scheduled him to come the next day and asked him to make sure he was bringing a new dish, multiswitch and LNB. He got there and said "Oh its LOS". I said NO ITS NOT. I WILL NOT CUT ANOTHER TREE, until you change the dish. He said he had brought a tripod and pole also. So he put the NEW dish on the tripod, hooked everything up and STILL NO EVEN TRANSPONDERS, but signals of 98-100 on the odd ones. He said he couldn't imagine the problem, so he said are you sure the correct dish is set on the receiver. He asked me to change it to the Phase II oval, which I did, of course we immediately lost the 101 satellite, so we didn't check the others....changed it back to the Phase III Oval........the system reset itself.....and VIOLA.........the EVEN transponders popped up........I didn't think to reset the receiver after installing the new dish, but it makes sense that we had to do that (too bad the PROFESSIONAL installer didn't know that.).......we left the tripod and pole up because the signal is so strong with it in place........so the moral of this story is......make sure your installers are doing what you are asking them to do.......and do the research on your own when you live in our part of the country!!!!! I'm not sure that we'd have a signal yet if you all hadn't said "Make sure they have CHANGED THE DISH, LNB and multiswitch"..........the guys here were saying "NO, a bad dish doesn't act like that" Well I hope they know now that it does!!!!!!!! Thank you again..........You were right on!!!!!!