"Loss of input signal" message, 622, OTA

Hall

SatelliteGuys Master
Original poster
Feb 14, 2004
18,409
3,199
Germantown OH
My wife and I finally got around to watching Cold Case from last Sunday. Amazing Race (??) ran over it's time slot and luckily we had Cold Case's end time extended by 30 minutes or more. Anyway, as we're fast-forwarding to the start of Cold Case, a message popped up on-screen saying "Loss of input signal". It bounced around slowly, kinda like a screensaver. It was white text on a solid black background. This lasted approx 15 minutes (according to my wife), so we deleted the show.

Who's message is this ?? The TV station, the network feed, or my receiver ??

This channel is rec'd OTA. The TV is connected via component cable.
 
The message is from the receiver and it's simply letting you know that it lost the OTA signal. What's the signal level for that particular channel? If the signal level is good, then something must have happened with the TV station.
 
On occasion, I've gotten an obvious Dish error message regarding loss of OTA signal. It's in a greenish-yellow window and it very clearly explains the problem.

Found the error message/window. See the attachment.
 

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I've noticed that most of my OTA recordings are giving the lost signal message. Some on this board think it might be related to software updates the reciever has loaded.

The 622 is not pretty much worthless to me for the OTA tuner.
 
That is NOT the case for me. The "Loss of input signal" message I saw was the first time I've ever seen it. The error message image I posted happens so rarely I consider it a fluke, not the norm.

I'm not asking for opinions on the receiver, by the way.
 
I get that error message fairly often, generally when the signal strength is bouncing around (I'm assuming it is multipath interferance). I am currently buying a better outdoor antenna to hopefully take care of the issue (current I'm using a silver sensor).
 
Which message do you get "fairly often", the 'loss of signal strength' or dish error # 739 ??

I replaced the Silver Sensor (Terk copy) sometime ago with a Radio Shack 15-2160 mounted in my attic. I get near flawless reception with all stations getting 98-100 on strength except WKEF, which only gets 90-95.
 
Which antenna?

I get that error message fairly often, generally when the signal strength is bouncing around (I'm assuming it is multipath interferance). I am currently buying a better outdoor antenna to hopefully take care of the issue (current I'm using a silver sensor).

I have a Winegard Squareshooter and it is 1 of the units that is supposed to cure multi-path problems but I still have the occasionally have the loss of signal. My worse station is the VHF ch 9 which isn't running a full power signal. In fact there is only 1 station in my area that runs full power in this area and that is the PBS station.
 
Hall,

I'm going to disagree with everyone else. The "Loss of input signal" with white text on a black background was coming from the station. I have seen it before with my local CBS affiliate.
 
Which message do you get "fairly often", the 'loss of signal strength' or dish error # 739 ??

I replaced the Silver Sensor (Terk copy) sometime ago with a Radio Shack 15-2160 mounted in my attic. I get near flawless reception with all stations getting 98-100 on strength except WKEF, which only gets 90-95.

I receive the loss of signal error (looks like your screen shot) while watching shows on the digital OTA channels (not sure of the exact error).

Watchel1, I forget the exact model I ordered. It was off ebay. It had fairly good reviews, and it was only $30 shipped so I figured I'd give it a shot. If it doesn't work then I will probably buy a CM4200 series HD atenna.
 
Shot an e-mail to someone at WHIO. This person replied to a "technical" question I'd sent a long time ago and Gmail never forgets.... :)

Because CBS programming was delayed by the NFL schedule, HD programming for the evening was not available. The operator on duty was not aware of this and programmed the system for normal HD programming. He was not monitoring the signal closely. The video you saw was from the HD receiver itself.

He says it's from my receiver but what I think he means is, the OTA signal was there, it was just "empty" (???).
 
Hmmm... seems weird that your receiver would just drop if it saw nothing but black. I don't know how dish handles a valid stream with nothing in it...
 
I guess it's no different than WPDT's 16-6 during the day. The signal is there, it's just empty. Again, I'm positive that the message I got was NOT from my receiver. Yeah, it displayed, but it displayed what was sent no differently than if it were a TV show.
 
Because CBS programming was delayed by the NFL schedule, HD programming for the evening was not available. The operator on duty was not aware of this and programmed the system for normal HD programming. He was not monitoring the signal closely. The video you saw was from the HD receiver itself.

I think the station engineer was talking about HIS receiver. In other words, the station was programmed to show what was on CBS-HD from the network, but there wasn't any signal available, so their receiver showed the error message and it was broadcast. YOUR receiver dutifully recorded it.

Brad
 
Harris IRD used by CBS Network, depending on the firmware it is running or how options are set, will either freeze the last good frame or display a black slate with "Loss of Signal Input"

 
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