Sorry to here about your poor luck with your Ultra. I have a 1st generation Platinum and it works great. No issues at all with lower SR. I almost opted for and now wish I had, an Extreme [hw blind scan capable] but didnt. I got a famliy member into Ku FTAing, and he did get an Extreme so periodicly I go over to his house, pan the sky and bs the birds and then copy his channel list to a usb stick to ul back to mine when I get home....lol. Beats the heck out of waiting for the Plat to scan....it's SLOOOW! Being about 2 1/2+ years newer than mine, perhaps the Ultras were designed/built with less TLC considering the "market demand" when they came out.
Have you tried to build a channel list using the Channelmaster proggy based on the FTA lists out there? Maybe if it misses locking durring a bs it will lock if the channel data is already present, just a bit slower. Just a thought.
I also have a Coolsat 6000 that is every bit as good as the VS and is worlds quicker than the VS for blind scan. Channelmaster also supports it's channel list format. It should be pretty simple, but I've not taken time to play around with transposing the info from one format to the other.
I'm thinking about getting a Sonicview pvr capable dual tuner as my next FTA box. If it's as good as these other two rice boxes, I think I'll be pleased.