Community Forums

Ol'Joe · 09-29-2009, 05:33 AM

Hi All,

I continue to have just a ton of trouble aligning my portable 5LNB HD Direct dish. No matter what I do I cannot get better than an 80% signal. I'm a marine Navigator , I understand azimuth, altitude, amplitude and slew so direction and deflection aren't the issue. Is it equipment? The dish has fallen over on the lnb's once. 60 knot winds one night. The DVR dosen't want to act right either. it appears to record but will only playback 3-10 seconds of the program before freezing everything up requireing a hard reset . Is this a product of poor signal or a hardware issue? I purchased one of those signal finders. It too only appears to get a 80 signal strength. At present I have an obstructed line of sight with no improvement of signal strength. I do have the old 3LNB dish in storage. Will it work with the hd receivers? I'm plan to try it today. And finally, my old direct receivers had an audio output to the signal meters, the hd receivers don't, is that normal ? Thanks for looking and any advice would be greatly appreciated. Good roads to Ya

Dmiles · 09-29-2009, 06:24 AM

Joe,

Sorry to hear you are having trouble. The 3 LNB dish will work with the HD receiver, that's the setup I had before I got my slimline dish when HD locals became available in my area.

Bill Adams · 09-29-2009, 06:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ol'Joe

Hi All,

I continue to have just a ton of trouble aligning my portable 5LNB HD Direct dish. No matter what I do I cannot get better than an 80% signal. I'm a marine Navigator , I understand azimuth, altitude, amplitude and slew so direction and deflection aren't the issue. Is it equipment? The dish has fallen over on the lnb's once. 60 knot winds one night. The DVR dosen't want to act right either. it appears to record but will only playback 3-10 seconds of the program before freezing everything up requireing a hard reset . Is this a product of poor signal or a hardware issue? I purchased one of those signal finders. It too only appears to get a 80 signal strength. At present I have an obstructed line of sight with no improvement of signal strength. I do have the old 3LNB dish in storage. Will it work with the hd receivers? I'm plan to try it today. And finally, my old direct receivers had an audio output to the signal meters, the hd receivers don't, is that normal ? Thanks for looking and any advice would be greatly appreciated. Good roads to Ya

The DVR problems appear to be DVR problems. There's not anything the antenna could do to cause this.
Your 3 LNB antenna will work fine with your HD DVR expect that you will not be able to receive any HD programming (OK, there might be a couple of HD's left out there on 110 or 119).
It does sound likely that you may have damaged your antenna, but what's wrong with a signal in the 80's? You should get excellent service at that level.

Ol'Joe · 09-30-2009, 06:34 AM

Morn' n All, DMiles and Bill,

Thanks for the advice guys. I got lucky yesterday in a way. My friend is out on a required 7 day vacate by membership CG. I saw his 5LNB dish doing nothing in his storage area so I called him and asked to use it as a test. He said go ahead and I did. I set his dish up next to mine and in 30 seconds I had perfect alignment and a 96 signal. I then recorded 3 + hours of DVR and it worked perfectly. I have to assume that I have in fact damaged the dish (when it fell over) and it somehow compromised the signal into the dvr too. I'll be calling Direct this morning to discuss replacement. For Bill, I agree that normally an 80 would work well but it seemed to be much more supeptible to weather however slight and many of the channels would suffer "searching issues" in even clear weather. Any how it looks like a replacement dish is the answer. I'll let you know how it works out. Good roads to all, Thanks

paz · 09-30-2009, 07:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ol'Joe

Hi All,

The DVR dosen't want to act right either. it appears to record but will only playback 3-10 seconds of the program before freezing everything up requireing a hard reset.

We had the same problem with our SD receiver. I made several calls to Direct Tech Service. They finally walked me through a procedure that went beyond the usual hard reset (you will loose any programs you have recorded). Nothing seemed to help, so I went out to Best Buy and bought a new receiver for $100. No problems since. The other good thing is we saved the remote from the old system, so we now have a spare.

Mandys Man · 09-30-2009, 09:21 AM

Ol'Joe,

If you are going to replace the Damaged LNB's the new set-up has only 3 LNB's on the arm. Don't know when they made the changeover, but they just installed a 3 on my house. When I asked why it was not a 5, they said the newest was a 3. We also have HD in our MH with a SlimLine Motosat.

Ol'Joe · 10-01-2009, 08:01 AM

Morn'n all,
Well talked with Direct yesterday, After explaining my dilema they agreed it's probably dish and receiver problems and there sending a tech out. The real luck is they're coming out at 1200 - 1600 TODAY! Wow I figured it'd be a week at least. Said it was a free service call because I have the service plan, we'll see. Now a slightly skewed comment of this topic today.
Do any of these satellite companies have any idea how many RV'ers use thier services and do they understand the nuances of RV'n and Sat TV. I am fed up with explaining each and every time why I have a seperate dish. " No not on the roof, Yes my billing address is South Dakota but I want Virginia Beach, VA local Channels because that's where I'm staying for 4 months. No DON't change the Local channels , No don't change the biling address, Give me someone who understands RV's" Only to be connected to KINGDOMES installation teams. Direct TV, If your lurking out there hire someone who is an RV'er who understands the lifestyle and can relate to our unique problems and you might see a significant increase in subscriptions. How many people have just plain given up over the frustration cuased by the service agents on the phone that cannot fathom our neeeds. Nuff venting, Good roads to ya!

Ol'Joe · 10-02-2009, 05:40 AM

Morn'n All,

Well I"m back on the air again. The Diect service tech called and confirmed his schedule at 1500, was onsite at 1530 and stayed until 1800. He first changed out the LNB head for a new one with no improvement of signal. He deceided that the dish must be "warped" so he put a whole new dish together and Bang 98% signal.Into the rig and one look at the DVD freezing up and he deceided that the hard drive was messed up. Bang new receiver. In between he refreshed all my cable connectors and even gave me a long run of cable to replace a piece of rg-59 I was using. It took him awhle to link the new box to direct with some screwy wireless communicator he was using but the bottom line is it's all fixed now. And the service plan works! Nothing out of pocket. Can't beat that. The Tech was young, smart, proffesional and amiable. Didn't hurt his image one iota to find out he's a Navy Vet with 2 tours in the "Sandbox" augmenting the ground forces. I made sure to thank him "Twice". Good roads to all.