Thread: 922 4DTV Receiver Broke???

Hey guys,

I installed my new lnbf over the weekend. The good news is the lnbf works pretty well, the bad news is I think my 922 is broken. I'd been having a lot of pixelation problems for a while, which I attributed to stability issues with my old lnb's. I've been giving a lot of thought to just going FTA for a while, so I decided to get one of the combo C/KU lnbf's that Sat AV sells. It works great by the way, but I'll start another thread to discuss it. Anyways, after installing the lnbf and getting it tuned correctly I had as good and maybe slightly better C-band quality and KU was about 10 points higher. Unfortunatly, I still had the pixelation issue. The pixelation problem occurs every few seconds. It's not a consistent amount of time, maybe 5 seconds one time then 15 the next, but never more than a minute before I get a little blurp of pixelation. The signal quality never wavers though.

I was testing out different cables, and also fine tuning different sat locations and was doing a lot of cable swapping between the 4dtv and my Coolsat. One time after I swapped them my signal strength dropped to 10 and quality jumped to 99 for every channel. Unfortunately, I didn't have any picture, digital or analog, and the color display was all of a sudden black and white. Cutting it off and on, unplugging it and plugging it right back in, unplugging and waiting an hour and then replugging, didn't work. Finally last night I went to drastic measures and did a master reset. Now I've got the same symptoms, signal strength of 10 and no channels analog or digital. The Coolsat still pulls in channels fine though, and I can move the dish with the 4dtv.

I'm thinking I'm going to have to send it to ATS for repair, but thought I'd check with you guys first. Anybody have any ideas?



Thanks,
Mike

the 10 signal i found is often because of a wire tip. before thinking 922 is bad try a few things first. are you using any svideo wire - this causes the black and white issue. how are the analogs, are the pixelations on all sat?

Originally Posted by ediemash

the 10 signal i found is often because of a wire tip. before thinking 922 is bad try a few things first. are you using any svideo wire - this causes the black and white issue. how are the analogs, are the pixelations on all sat?

I may have the svideo connection going into a capture card on my PC. I'll check that. Right now I don't get any picture on any channel. Prior to that, the analogs worked fine and, I forgot this previously, but the ITC digital didn't seem to pixelate. At least the Nebraska PBS channels didn't have the issue. I'm going to show some ignorance now, but what do you mean by a "wire tip"?

Thanks,
Mike

if you havent changed the cable ends you probably dont have anything to worry about, the only time ive had the signal 10 issue is because of the ends of cable were messed with and lnb was bad, was hit by lightning

if the pixelation on all sats it probably needs fixing but if it just on certain ones its probably something else, also is it a certain time of day it happens. ive seen this happen if the lnb gets too hot or when youre on a splitter with your fta receiver

I know it's not the lnbf, as it works fine with my Coolsat. There shouldn't be any bad cables, again because the FTA is working. I'm wondering if I may have messed up a cable connection somewhere though. I was tracing several pieces of coax I have run between the inside and outside of the house, using the 4dtv yesterday. While I was doing that, I had the thing twisted around so I could access the back. I'll recheck all the connections when I get home tonight.

Thanks for the suggestions!
Mike

Well guys, I just checked the wires and everything looks good. I even swapped the c-band coax over to my Coolsat and I'm getting 94 quality on the networks on Galaxy 16. If I swap the cable back to the 922, it's signal 10 and no analog picture. I can't even try for the 4dtv digitals because after doing the master reset last night I don't have the channel maps. This is also an R5000 modded 922, so I'm thinking I may need to talk with Nextcomm about repairs instead of ATS.

Anyone have any other suggestions to try before I e-mail Nextcomm?

Here's a couple of ideas that might help. Do you have the DC light lit on the front panel when on a DCII channel? Are the C/Ku cables attached to the right inputs? Have you selected LNBF in the options LNB/LNBF menu? Have you turned off and unplugged the unit, removed the VCII module and then seen if there's any difference in reception? Have you tried either C-band or Ku-band by itself and seen the results. Have you double checked the skew angle of the LNBF? Just some ideas. Good Luck.

Originally Posted by Hermitman

Here's a couple of ideas that might help. Do you have the DC light lit on the front panel when on a DCII channel? Are the C/Ku cables attached to the right inputs? Have you selected LNBF in the options LNB/LNBF menu? Have you turned off and unplugged the unit, removed the VCII module and then seen if there's any difference in reception? Have you tried either C-band or Ku-band by itself and seen the results. Have you double checked the skew angle of the LNBF? Just some ideas. Good Luck.

Hermitman,

Thanks for the reply. I think I've tried pretty much all of your suggestions. I wasn't getting a DC light prior to doing the reset and of course now I don't have the channel maps so no DC light at all. C/KU cables are attached correctly, I took the C band cable off and attached it to my Coolsat. I was getting 94 quality on the Caribbean networks, so I think the dish must be tuned reasonably well. The LNBF selection is correct and I've unplugged and replugged the thing a whole lot of times.

I think at this point I'm just going to send it to ATS. I exchanged e-mails with them today, and they felt like they could work around the R5000 mod.

Thanks again for trying! By the way I'm very jealous of that dish farm you've got in your avatar.

Mike

The only thing left to try is removing the VCII module. I've seen when those modules go bad, they sometimes short out and draw too much power from the receiver's power supply. This causes strange results when trying to receive channels. Good luck.