Direct TV issues after using Antenna

[Mojo13]

I have a question for you folks, hopefully you have an answer or suggestion for me.
I normally use Direct TV in my Class A motor home, but every once in a while I do not have direct line of sight and use the local channels through the antenna on the roof.
To use the antenna on the roof, I go into setup on the Sony TV and change the input to antenna and have the TV search the air waves for channels. This works good and I am set for night if I am going to watch TV.
Next day at a new location, I want to switch to Direct TV and this is where I have problems. I go into the TV settings and switch the input back to HDMI 4 for the Direct TV, turn the dish on and reset the Direct TV box. The Direct TV system never comes back to life, the KVM dish continues to rotate, I can see the Direct TV start up menu on the TV going through its startup cycle. In the end I get a 771 issue and the system never does come up.
It seems crazy to me that this is happening from the simple change from antenna to Direct TV.
This has happened to me twice; once fixed by RV repair shop, once I called Direct TV and they rebooted the system and that fixed it.

Does anyone have any ideas what is going on?

[cavie]

Originally Posted by Mojo13

I have a question for you folks, hopefully you have an answer or suggestion for me.
I normally use Direct TV in my Class A motor home, but every once in a while I do not have direct line of sight and use the local channels through the antenna on the roof.
To use the antenna on the roof, I go into setup on the Sony TV and change the input to antenna and have the TV search the air waves for channels. This works good and I am set for night if I am going to watch TV.
Next day at a new location, I want to switch to Direct TV and this is where I have problems. I go into the TV settings and switch the input back to HDMI 4 for the Direct TV, turn the dish on and reset the Direct TV box. The Direct TV system never comes back to life, the KVM dish continues to rotate, I can see the Direct TV start up menu on the TV going through its startup cycle. In the end I get a 771 issue and the system never does come up.
It seems crazy to me that this is happening from the simple change from antenna to Direct TV.
This has happened to me twice; once fixed by RV repair shop, once I called Direct TV and they rebooted the system and that fixed it.

Does anyone have any ideas what is going on?

the dish is not finding direct line of sight.

[TANDD]

I have had a similar problem. Worked fine at home but would not come on and gave me 771. The problem was that my Direct box was set to a local channel at home that was not available at the new location. Try a high number channel that is available everywhere. Works for me.

[Alan_Hepburn]

Assuming you have a dome on the roof and not a dish antenna: the dome cannot receive the direcTV HD signal - you need to access the receiver's menu and switch it over to SD channels.


If you have a dish, such as a Winegard Trav'ler, then it should be able to receive the HD signal, but as has been mentioned the receiver may be trying to access a channel that is not available at your location - try changing the channel on the receiver.

[Jim A]

The most common cause of 771 error codes is either a coax problem or an obstruction issue. Did you change any coax connection or any A/B switch setting when you did the conversion to watch OTA TV? Back when I had a Kingdome, their tech support told me that the dish alignment system requires the LNB voltage signal from the receiver to do its thing. My coach had a mis-wired A/B switch from the factory that caused the same type of problem when I first installed the dome. (The dome has since been removed in favor of a Trav'ler.)

Also, check in the RV park for coaches with an open Directv dish, and note which direction it is pointing. Then double check around your coach in that direction for a potential obstacle.

As a last resort before calling in Directv, go to their website and "Refresh" your receiver. You mentioned Directv fixed it once before by "rebooting" the system. If I don't use my system for a while, I have to refresh mine. If your system is turned off and misses an update, it will need to be refreshed. It's bad luck that it would happen the night you were not using it. But it happens! But that usually shows up as a 722 error code.

[Mojo13]

Thanks folks

I have a few things to try on my next trip.

I like the idea of changing to SD channels, I will look into that more.

Cable, connection, KVM auto alignment dish is all good, it works today anywhere in the country. It is just when I use the old antenna system, I loose access to the Direct TV when going back to Direct.

[docj]

Originally Posted by Alan_Hepburn

Assuming you have a dome on the roof and not a dish antenna: the dome cannot receive the direcTV HD signal - you need to access the receiver's menu and switch it over to SD channels.

With all due respect, there's no such thing as "switching it over to SD channels". DirecTV HD receivers receive both HD and SD signals all the time. Normally, most people set their Guide display to "Ignore SD Duplicates" so the SD channels don't show up in the Guide. But that setting can easily be changed by going to Menu/Preferences/Display and setting it to display all channels.

However, since the OP can get reception before he switches to his OTA antenna, this indicates to me that this is not his problem.

As others have said the 771 error can occur if the receiver is trying to connect to a channel that isn't available. This, of course, would happen if the OP has moved his RV outside the spot beam for his local channels. Has the OP tried tuning to a cable channel that isn't part of his local channel spot beam.

He also doesn't say if he has manually reset the receiver by pushing the red button near the access card. Even though it's not always necessary, I always reset my receiver when we've moved to a new location. He does say that having DTV reset his receiver did fix the problem, so it might be that a reset is all he needs.

[MnP]

Sounds like the OP has his TV still tuned to the OTA channel from the night before. Just select a cable channel ie A&E or CNN, etc. and I suspect that all will be good.

[Alan_Hepburn]

Originally Posted by docj

With all due respect, there's no such thing as "switching it over to SD channels". DirecTV HD receivers receive both HD and SD signals all the time. Normally, most people set their Guide display to "Ignore SD Duplicates" so the SD channels don't show up in the Guide. But that setting can easily be changed by going to Menu/Preferences/Display and setting it to display all channels.

I do this every time we go from the house to the RV: at home we have an HD dish feeding the Genie receiver feeding an HD TV. In the motorhome we have an old KVH R4 dome feeding the Genie receiver through a Winegard SWM-840 kit feeding an HD TV. At home I set the Genie to ignore SD Duplicates. When I take the Genie into the RV I have to set it to ignore HD channels - if I don't I get the 771 error. The KVH dome cannot receive HD signals so even though it can find the 101 satellite and lock on the Genie does not see any HD signals and will not work until I ignore the HD signals. I haven't tried it using the "show all channels" option in the setup - maybe I'll try that next time, although it makes for a lot more channel options in the guide!

[Mojo13]

This is a little of a crazy problem.

I do open the door and push in the reset button for a complete reboot of the Direct TV system.

The Direct TV usually starts with a reboot as I have just moved the RV to another location and the RV goes through a complete power cycle/refresh.

The alignment of the dish is fine because it works when Direct TV does the hard reboot of my system.

I just don't know why something as simple as a switch from HDMI4 to antenna can cause such problems.

I thought maybe someone online had experienced this themselves and give shed light on a solution.

thx

[Tha_Rooster]

Originally Posted by Mojo13

I have a question for you folks, hopefully you have an answer or suggestion for me.

I normally use Direct TV in my Class A motor home, but every once in a while I do not have direct line of sight and use the local channels through the antenna on the roof.

To use the antenna on the roof, I go into setup on the Sony TV and change the input to antenna and have the TV search the air waves for channels. This works good and I am set for night if I am going to watch TV.

Next day at a new location, I want to switch to Direct TV and this is where I have problems. I go into the TV settings and switch the input back to HDMI 4 for the Direct TV, turn the dish on and reset the Direct TV box. The Direct TV system never comes back to life, the KVM dish continues to rotate, I can see the Direct TV start up menu on the TV going through its startup cycle. In the end I get a 771 issue and the system never does come up.

It seems crazy to me that this is happening from the simple change from antenna to Direct TV.

This has happened to me twice; once fixed by RV repair shop, once I called Direct TV and they rebooted the system and that fixed it.



Does anyone have any ideas what is going on?

Are you watching signal strength menu to see if it locks in?

[winegard]

Read through this and though it isn't our satellite antenna from the way the post reads - are you actually resetting the DIRECTV receiver when you switch back to HDMI4 or just turning it on?

If you're resetting it, it could be possible the receiver is defaulting to it's SWM settings, whereas your antenna likely requires a multiswitch configuration.

It's also possible that the word "reset" in your post means that you're just turning it on and still having issues.

Additionally, it may be worthwhile to turn on the receiver before the antenna. The reason for this is that some antenna types (typically older systems) require 12VDC from the receiver output to power the LNB during the search. If you are turning the antenna on and then the receiver, it could be possible the antenna is searching blind while the receiver is booting (I know the DIRECTV receivers can be somewhat slow in starting up) and by the time the receiver is completely booted, the antenna may have completed its search without LNB power and failed to locate any satellites. This would be more prevalent on in-motion units, many of which use GPS to aid search and thus have faster search sequences overall.

[Alan_Hepburn]

Originally Posted by winegard

Read through this and though it isn't our satellite antenna from the way the post reads - are you actually resetting the DIRECTV receiver when you switch back to HDMI4 or just turning it on?

If you're resetting it, it could be possible the receiver is defaulting to it's SWM settings, whereas your antenna likely requires a multiswitch configuration.

It's also possible that the word "reset" in your post means that you're just turning it on and still having issues.

Additionally, it may be worthwhile to turn on the receiver before the antenna. The reason for this is that some antenna types (typically older systems) require 12VDC from the receiver output to power the LNB during the search. If you are turning the antenna on and then the receiver, it could be possible the antenna is searching blind while the receiver is booting (I know the DIRECTV receivers can be somewhat slow in starting up) and by the time the receiver is completely booted, the antenna may have completed its search without LNB power and failed to locate any satellites. This would be more prevalent on in-motion units, many of which use GPS to aid search and thus have faster search sequences overall.

With our situation at home we have a Genie master (H44-500) in our living room, connected to an HD TV and a Genie slave (C41-700) in the den connected to an SD TV. I have configured the master to ignore SD duplicates and the slave to ignore HD duplicates.
In the motorhome we have an old KVH R4 dome, and I have added the SWM-840 kit that feeds an SD TV in the living room and an HD TV in the bedroom. When we use the RV I first turn on the dome and let it find the signal, which usually takes a minute or two. Then I connect the Genie master to the HD TV in the bedroom and it will boot up, download the satellite info, and then report that it cannot find a signal. Then I reconfigure it to ignore HD duplicates and it starts working as expected. I connect the Genie slave to the SD TV in the living room and it connects to the master and starts working.
If the OP has his receiver set to ignore SD duplicates then it will reboot, download information and then report a lack of signal, because a dome cannot receive the DirecTV HD signal. Once the receiver is set to ignore the HD channels then the SD channels work fine.

I suppose you could set the receivers to show all duplicates, but then the channel guide gets filled up with duplicate channels, making it more cumbersome to scroll through the guide...
Now, this may not be the OP's issue, but it's worth bringing up in case he doesn't know about the receiver configuration options...

[Mojo13]

I'm going back on the road in a few weeks and give all of y'all's ideas a try.

I will let you folks know how it goes.

Thanks