Stumped

[wvman]

I have a problem I'm not exactly sure what to do with. Last evening my wife came into the living room and told me the LAFF MUX was breaking up something awful. This MUX is coming on off the 12 foot dish I got last fall and finally finished setting up a month or so between snow storms. It carries signal level of 95 with a signal quality of 88. I have had trouble from time to time with this dish breaking up, so I went ahead and put on a new dual output LNBF, ran new cable and used my laser alignment device to align the scalar and H/V, so it's perfectly centered.

When my wife told me what it was doing, I looked at the signal level and went into the living room to see what the channels looked like on the other dish (71/2 foot). The channels were perfect even with a much lower signal level and quality. My first thought was the receiver. My receiver is the same as hers, a V8 Golden, so I unhooked mine, hooked hers up, and no problem breaking up. I watched it all evening and checked it again this morning, and it is still working fine. In the mean time, I hooked up an HDVR1200 we used earlier, and all is well.

There are no switches hooked up and the living room and my wife's room are independent of each other on 2 different dishes. Neither cable run is longer than 50 feet, and all the connectors are water tight and both dishes are within 30 feet of each other, but neither shadows the other. This thing is a real head scratcher. There was no weather issues at the time. Sun shine and partially cloudy skies. I even unhooked my wireless router to see if that was the problem. Nothing changed. Any suggestions?

 

[iBoston]

Is this 12' footer from Tek2000?

 

[wvman]

Is this 12' footer from Tek2000?

No, this is a Unimesh I picked up locally.

 

[lost_mesa]

Did you try changing channels to a different mux and then back again, to see if that fixed the issue? My V8 does that sometimes and changing channels always fixes this.

 

[Magic Static]

With all the variables that make up a satellite signal it is hard to find a receiver that will handle everything well. I noticed my V7+ATSC doing the same thing on Grit. Very strong signal but very broken audio. Switched to the microHD and all is good.

 

[wvman]

Did you try changing channels to a different mux and then back again, to see if that fixed the issue? My V8 does that sometimes and changing channels always fixes this.

Yes, I did that. I even reset the receiver.

 

[wvman]

With all the variables that make up a satellite signal it is hard to find a receiver that will handle everything well. I noticed my V7+ATSC doing the same thing on Grit. Very strong signal but very broken audio. Switched to the microHD and all is good.

I find it odd that I cannot get it to do it on the other dish on the same channels. I hooked it up in the living room and it's been working great since last evening. I thought it may have been the old HTS LNBF I had on there, but I changed all that and even the cable, and still doing it. I spoke with my wife since I posted this thread, and she said it had been doing it for a few days and seems to come and go. She said it does it at about the same time each day, and if you leave it alone, it clears up, but I never have that problem on the other dish. Weird.

 

[armadillo_115]

Try changing the transponder # +2 and -2... see if one way or the other is an improvement.
I just had to do that the other day for a Spanish channel the wife loves. Her receiver and dish got ZERO signal, while my receiver and dish still locked the channel fine fine. There has been no notification of the transponder changing freq, so I'm assuming some interference was knocking it off.

EDIT: Above was for the OP. The grit problem is a different story entirely.

 

[wvman]

Try changing the transponder # +2 and -2... see if one way or the other is an improvement.
I just had to do that the other day for a Spanish channel the wife loves. Her receiver and dish got ZERO signal, while my receiver and dish still locked the channel fine fine. There has been no notification of the transponder changing freq, so I'm assuming some interference was knocking it off.

EDIT: Above was for the OP. The grit problem is a different story entirely.

I haven't tried that, but after changing the receiver from the V8 Golden to the Geosat Pro, it hasn't done it since. I find it odd that the same receiver that was acting up on the other dish is working perfectly on the dish in the living room. I haven't done a scan or changed anything since I moved it from one room to the other, and it hasn't missed a beat since it was relocated. I dug around in the building over the weekend and found a full roll of RG11 direct burial cable. I'm thinking about switching out the cable to all the dishes to RG11.

It probably isn't necessary, but if I do it, I probably won't have to change cable again in my lifetime since everything is in conduit. Eventually, I'd like to lock down all the dishes on separate satellites and bring all the channels in on two cables in two rooms. I'll most likely leave the one dish movable for the sake of scanning new satellites or new channels that are not up there now. I'll give your suggestion a try and see what happens. Thanks for the input.

 

[armadillo_115]

Something similar here,Wvman. The problem the wife was having with her channel only happened when that one receiver was paired with that one dish: The 9000i and the chinese receiver BOTH locked the channel on my dish using the original Freq. But only the 9000i would lock the original signal on the wife's dish.
And the signal wasn't just weak two digits over...it was non-existent.

I've thought about switching to RG-11 as well.. just not sure it will give me anything more than I have now.

 

[wvman]

Something similar here,Wvman. The problem the wife was having with her channel only happened when that one receiver was paired with that one dish: The 9000i and the chinese receiver BOTH locked the channel on my dish using the original Freq. But only the 9000i would lock the original signal on the wife's dish.
And the signal wasn't just weak two digits over...it was non-existent.

I've thought about switching to RG-11 as well.. just not sure it will give me anything more than I have now.

My cable runs are short, so I probably won't gain anything. Isn't it odd how one receiver will act screwy on one dish and not another? I love the V8 Golden. I like its features, it's menus and how easily it tunes, but it does have one oddity. I can't find how to set the recording time in the menu. It generally defaults to 2 hours, and the only way I can find to change it is to hit the record button twice and it will bring up the recording time, but you have to start recording something to change it, and once its done recording, it goes back to the default time.

I've been all over the menus and so far I haven't located another way to do it. Maybe I missed something in the menus. The other day when I took the V8 out of my wife's room and hooked it up in the living room, it didn't have Galaxy 16 programmed in. When I did a scan on my dish, it would not scan in one channel. I tried it several times, and then went in and added the transponder, polarity and symbol rate and then scanned the transponder, and it found it no problem. I bet I scanned it a half dozen times before adding the transponder, and it would not pick it up.

Other than that, I really like the V8. Great little receiver.

 

[waylew]

Maybe I missed something

Don't know how different the V8 is from my V7 but,on the V7 press the blue button on the remote (Timer),brings up a numbered list,press OK,brings up a screen for setting start/stop times.

 

[wvman]

Don't know how different the V8 is from my V7 but,on the V7 press the blue button on the remote (Timer),brings up a numbered list,press OK,brings up a screen for setting start/stop times.

There are some differences between the V7 & V8, especially the button functions. I'll try what you said and see what happens. I've had these receivers a couple months and haven't cracked open the owners manual yet. I'm funny that way. I got it working and forgot about reading it. It made several features easier than the V7, and some more difficult, but it's really a nice receiver. Question! Does your V7 stutter on some channels in the LAFF MUX?

I've never done a firmware update on my V7's. If you have the latest update, would you please post it in here? I'd appreciate it.

 

[waylew]

Since the HDMI fried in my V7 I don't really use it that much,still has whatever firmware it came with.As far as LAFF goes I get that OTA and even at that I rarely watch it,other than a minute or two of Night Court when I'm flipping thru channels.

 

[Magic Static]

There are some differences between the V7 & V8, especially the button functions. I'll try what you said and see what happens. I've had these receivers a couple months and haven't cracked open the owners manual yet. I'm funny that way. I got it working and forgot about reading it. It made several features easier than the V7, and some more difficult, but it's really a nice receiver. Question! Does your V7 stutter on some channels in the LAFF MUX?

I've never done a firmware update on my V7's. If you have the latest update, would you please post it in here? I'd appreciate it.

My V7 stutters on that mux too. Updates will not be posted in this forum as they contain codes for TOS.

 

[Shicks4]

Since the HDMI fried in my V7 I don't really use it that much,still has whatever firmware it came with.As far as LAFF goes I get that OTA and even at that I rarely watch it,other than a minute or two of Night Court when I'm flipping thru channels.

I wonder if thats what happened to my v7, I did a firware update and have not been able to get picture back on the hdmi?

 

[Titanium]

If the HDMI output did not work after the update, I the understand that the video default output is set to PAL (50hz) format and your TV may not be multi-format capable. Set the Video output to a NTSC (60hz) setting (i.e. 720p60 / 1080i60 / 1080p60, etc.) that is compatible to your TV and the video should display.

 

[Shicks4]

If the HDMI output did not work after the update, I the understand that the video default output is set to PAL (50hz) format and your TV may not be multi-format capable. Set the Video output to a NTSC (60hz) setting (i.e. 720p60 / 1080i60 / 1080p60, etc.) that is compatible to your TV and the video should display.

yeah i did the blind remote key sequence and no picture returned. I dont know what happened. Kinda sucks because out of all ther eceivers i have it was the only one that could pull in the heros, decadeds movies channels.

 

[waylew]

Mine worked fine until I hooked it in to a Philips HDMI switch with my AZUltra.Shortly after that,few days, the HDMI quit working and it was making interference out of the line out video.Disconnected the switch and everything else was back to normal except the HDMI was dead on the V7.

 

[wvman]

My V7 stutters on that mux too. Updates will not be posted in this forum as they contain codes for TOS.

Neither of my V8 Golden's stutter. I just thought I'd try a firmware update to see if it would cure the stuttering problem on the V7's. Not interested in anything else.