Anyone having OTA reception problems with H3?

jgags6

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Jan 31, 2006
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Rockford,IL
On Thursday I had the Hopper 3 installed after switching from Directv and I've noticed that my OTA channels are pixelating or dropping out every 10-15 seconds on every channel. I also had the OTA connected to Directv and didn't experience these problems.. I don't believe the installer messed around with the antenna when he was installing so I'm not sure why this would be an issue with Dish.

Thanks!
 
When you say OTA, are you referring to your TV tuner or are you using the USB OTA adapter with the Hopper ? Does your antenna flow through a completely separate coax cable, or was it sharing a cable with satellite before ?
 
It is running through the Hopper using the USB adapter, and it is a separate cable.
 
Sounds like the proper setup...not sure why you wouldn't get at least as good as you had. Antenna pointing or loose/bad connector is the obvious things that I'm sure you already checked. I'd suggest connecting the antenna cable to the TV and see how it performs with OTA to compare to the USB tuner adapter to isolate the issue further. Any splitter/amps in that line ? ( as in got unplugged <g> )
 
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Not exactly the same issue as me, but when recording a show on my local ABC channel I get cutouts every couple of seconds. However, if I'm watching that same channel live i have no issues.

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Not exactly the same issue as me, but when recording a show on my local ABC channel I get cutouts every couple of seconds. However, if I'm watching that same channel live i have no issues.

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Yup, that's a bug. The same thing is happening here. Tried 2 different antenna, OTA adapters and H3's and the all do it. OTA Live TV is great but recordings are often pixelated and broken up. Sometimes a recording is fine but most of them are a mess.

Please report this to Dish via DIRT. I don't think there's many of us using OTA and the more reports about this they get the faster they might fix it.
 
I reported the same issue over in the "I have a Hopper 3" thread, but this is the better place to discuss what apparently isn't a unique situation.

After twelve hours or so of operation, I noted that all my OTA channels via the OTA Dongle were experiencing the picture pixelation and audio dropouts. I had used a different USB cable than the one that came with the Dongle, so this morning I switched it with the cable from the Dongle box. It has a choke build it to the cable. It could be the Dongle is susceptible to the interference from the Hopper 3 and using a non-choked USB cable introduces too much interference for clear reception.

It appears to be okay for now, but I did see occasional dropouts on the one station I experienced it last night. I wonder if the signal might be too strong? I don't have (or need) any amplifier in my OTA antenna system, and it is separate from the Dish signal (no duplexing).

The Samsung TV that's on the same splitter as the OTA dongle is not experiencing any issues with the signal, nor is the Sony up in the bedroom connected to the same antenna.
 
My ota dongle never worked well on H2. Not any better on H3

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Mine has always worked well. In fact I've picked up more channels than when I originally installed the OTA module.
 
I've still got a HWS with OTA on a different account at the same location and it's having none of these problems.
 
Well, I removed the coax that used to go the recordable DVD writer that had a NTSC tuner and was removed from my system when all the NTSC channels switched over to ATSC. It might have been acting as an antenna that fed back enough signal (since my locals are only a mile away) to cause multi-path on the OTA dongle. It remains to be seen if that helps, though, as after I came back to the 4K Joey and I saw that the NBC channel was still having problems. None of the other channels, did, though.

Also, if I was having problems with 016-01, shouldn't I see the same problem on 016-02? Maybe it's the lower bitrate since it's SD, but I watched as much "Green Acres" as I could and I didn't see a glitch.

Here's another issue I noticed. If you right-arrow to bring up the quick browse and up/down arrow to an OTA sub-channel with no EPG data, if you select the channel it goes to the Record screen instead of tuning the channel.
 
I removed and tightened all the cords and last night I watched the majority of the Super Bowl using my OTA. All seemed to be working better, only dropped out once for a brief second. Looks like It was just a loose connection or something.
 
I removed and tightened all the cords and last night I watched the majority of the Super Bowl using my OTA. All seemed to be working better, only dropped out once for a brief second. Looks like It was just a loose connection or something.
I have no problem with watching live OTA, but when I watch a recording from OTA I get the every couple seconds dropouts.

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== I also have this Bug ====
-
ONLY the JOEY 4K breaks up on Over the Air.
My Joey 2.0 and Hopper 3.0 is fine on OTA.
Even locals that are with in 20 miles do it on a Joey 4K
I have tried TWO different USB tuners and Two different USB cables.
The same coax and ANT is being used as when on the Hopper WS. Nothing has changes with coax or splitters.
-
TEMP SOLUTION:
TO solve this issue I rebooted the Joey 4K then it worked.
Best guess to reproduce this issues, is run a LOT of Home Media movies through the Joey 4K, then viewing OTA through the Joey 4K has Pixelation.
Only a reboot of the Joey 4k fixes it once its starts.
Again Joey 2.0 is fine at all times.
 
The OTA channels I actually save from the scan to include for use work fine. Signal strength on these is identical to what they were on my HWS. Oddly though, the channel scan identifys substantially fewer channels than before. I actually had to scan a few times to see the local NBC affiliate whose signal strength is constantly 94 to 100%.
 
Question, what model USB OTA adapter/module/dongle do I need with the Hopper 3, and where can I order it?
Thanks!
 

"Lost" Recordings

Hopper 3 requires higher mount antenna?

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