Strange Behavior of Sonicview 8000HD

[JohninSD]

I finally put up a dish to use with my 8000. I've been using it for about a month for OTA channels. I bought the WS9036 from Galaxy Marketing along with their DMX521 LNB. I found Diplexers locally at Fry's and set up the system using the existing RG6. AImed at AMC 21 and did a blind scan, got several channels, most labeled as "AMC-21-001, AMC-21-002", etc. 3 of the channels come in clear, PBS World, Create TV, and V-Me. The others show colored blocks and produce an annoying squeal on the audio. I was mainly interested in Create TV as the local PBS station doesn't carry it and that's working fine. I did have some odd behavior of the Sonicview while setting up though. For one thing it refuses to lock onto the local PBS station during a DTV scan even though it has a good strong signal and it does in fact try to lock onto it, hanging at the right frequency (569 MHZ) for several seconds. This is the only local it won't recognize.

The most peculiar thing the Sonicview did though was to quit recognizing one of the locals after I changed the OSD from HD to SD. It was still in memory and the other tuners I have saw 100% signal strength. I ended up doing a factory reset, power off, and rescan everything to get it back. This unit seems very sensitive to something - what I don't know. I've had minor problems with the USB HD I'm using to record with it too, sometimes it says "No Device Connected" until I cycle the power on both the SV and the HD.

All in all I'm happy with the unit but since this is my first exposure to FTA stuff I don't have anything to compare it to. I don't think these things are quite to the "Consumer Product" category yet if this is typical. Imagine a salesman at Best Buy trying to explain about downloading firmware updates and connecting diplexers.

Next on the agenda will be a motor but I think that'll be a while.

John

Update - I adjusted the skew and distance from the dish of my LNB and picked up several more channels. The "S" stayed at 72 but the "Q" went from the single digits up to about 80. Can anyone point to an explanation of what these numbers mean?

[Iceberg]

S means signal...dont worry about it
Q means quality..thats what you need. Higher the quality the more stable the signal

You do need to skew the LNB for each satellite if the dish is fixed (which it sounds like it is). In San DIego, the skew is 12. So if you stand in front of the dish facing it, skew the LNB to 12 counterclockwise. There is little marks on the LNB that show skew. Each area is different. For me in Minneapolis, skew for that satellite is 35

Also, here is a list of the channels on that satellite. It shows the transponder info to match it up with

SatelliteGuys.US - 125.0°W AMC 21 Ku

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edit: the 1st two are gone now...have to get that updated

[JohninSD]

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Yes it is a fixed dish - as I'm new to all this I thought that taking things one step at a time would be the best way to approach it - so far so good. Turning the LNB CCW was just what I did to get the big increase in Q - I must have misread the directions originally as I had turned it CW at first - it did get a few channels that way but at very low Q. Moving the LNB as far from the dish as possible in the clamp also helped. Now I wonder if moving it even further would increase Q more. The reception right now is stable though so I plan to leave it alone for a while.

Thanks again for all the help.

John