I purchased a Tailgater w/ Vip211k bundle from Amazon. To test it out, I ran the coax and the satellite "cube" out the front door aimed at the southwestern sky, hooked up the receiver to my TV via HDMI, plugged it in and rather than being greeted by the setup screens depicted in the quick start guide, I got a very basic looking (i.e. low-level, sub operating system like if you enter the BIOS setup on your PC before the operating system starts booting up) screen with "Warning 981 Boot Recovery".
This screen told me that it needed to download vital program information and presented what looked like it might be a little progress bar made up of a dozen or so little blue squares. Sometimes the first little square will turn red for a minute, and then go back to blue, but that's all it would do for hours.
After googling around a little and talking to a support person at Dish I decided that the receiver might be defective and I opted to order another one from Amazon and return the one I had. Just got the new bundle today, hooked it up, and had the same exact issue.
So, am I just that unlucky, or am I doing something wrong? I'd like to be armed with some knowledge before I call Dish again. I've never owned a satellite system before, but I am software engineer so technical things aren't completely beyond my grasp. Here's are the assumptions I've been able to reach so far:
1 - The satellite in the "cube" must be powered via the coax that runs out to it, which drives a motor and aims the satellite to pick up signal. In order for that to work, the receiver needs to be able to talk to the satellite unit, which requires that a certain version of the operating system be installed on the receiver.
2 - I've read that some folks have bought these tailgater systems and had to hook up the receivers to their home satellite in order to download the updated operating system software to properly drive the satellite. I *don't* think that is the issue that I'm having. If that were the issue, I'd expect that I'd see some sort of setup screen when powering on the receiver that wouldn't ever complete because it wouldn't ever be able to aim the satellite. I'm not even getting that far, which to me means the receiver itself must just be fried.
3 - There is no way that the receiver will ever actually able to successfully download and perform the "boot recovery" that it needs, because in order to download, it would need a signal, and in order to have a signal, it would need to be able to aim the satellite in the cube, which it can't do because it can't load its operating system. I don't have access to any other Dish satellite systems, so I can't attempt to hook it up and let it recover that way.
4 - Are there any magic words/phrases you can use on the phone with Dish support to get to "escalation" support engineer that actually knows what's going on? Last time I called I felt like I probably knew about as much as the person I was talking to.
Can anyone confirm/deny any of the assumptions I've stated above? Has anyone owned a tailgater and experienced this problem before? Is it possible that I'm doing something to these receivers that is causing this to happen?
This screen told me that it needed to download vital program information and presented what looked like it might be a little progress bar made up of a dozen or so little blue squares. Sometimes the first little square will turn red for a minute, and then go back to blue, but that's all it would do for hours.
After googling around a little and talking to a support person at Dish I decided that the receiver might be defective and I opted to order another one from Amazon and return the one I had. Just got the new bundle today, hooked it up, and had the same exact issue.
So, am I just that unlucky, or am I doing something wrong? I'd like to be armed with some knowledge before I call Dish again. I've never owned a satellite system before, but I am software engineer so technical things aren't completely beyond my grasp. Here's are the assumptions I've been able to reach so far:
1 - The satellite in the "cube" must be powered via the coax that runs out to it, which drives a motor and aims the satellite to pick up signal. In order for that to work, the receiver needs to be able to talk to the satellite unit, which requires that a certain version of the operating system be installed on the receiver.
2 - I've read that some folks have bought these tailgater systems and had to hook up the receivers to their home satellite in order to download the updated operating system software to properly drive the satellite. I *don't* think that is the issue that I'm having. If that were the issue, I'd expect that I'd see some sort of setup screen when powering on the receiver that wouldn't ever complete because it wouldn't ever be able to aim the satellite. I'm not even getting that far, which to me means the receiver itself must just be fried.
3 - There is no way that the receiver will ever actually able to successfully download and perform the "boot recovery" that it needs, because in order to download, it would need a signal, and in order to have a signal, it would need to be able to aim the satellite in the cube, which it can't do because it can't load its operating system. I don't have access to any other Dish satellite systems, so I can't attempt to hook it up and let it recover that way.
4 - Are there any magic words/phrases you can use on the phone with Dish support to get to "escalation" support engineer that actually knows what's going on? Last time I called I felt like I probably knew about as much as the person I was talking to.
Can anyone confirm/deny any of the assumptions I've stated above? Has anyone owned a tailgater and experienced this problem before? Is it possible that I'm doing something to these receivers that is causing this to happen?
