So we moved down from Gainesville to Orlando this past week, and pulled the satellites off of the poles that we had. Actually, before I get started let me tell you what equipment we have. ViP722 hooked up via HDMI at 720p. 1 dish pointed at 61.5, 2nd dish pointed at 110/119.
Anyway, so I then went and bought some big planters, filled the bottom half with cement and mounted 2 poles 3.5' tall. (That leaves the rest of the depth of the planter for my wife to plan flowers in. I embedded 2 plastic pipes for drainage in each). I put the dishes on their respective poles, and then using the numbers from Dishpointer, I've put in the skew and elevation and the general direction.
Now the problem is that when I go the the signal meter on the receiver, it registers a signal of 0 for any of 61.5/110/119. I don't even know if it detects that the LNB's are connected.
So some questions:
1/ Is there a way to tell whether the receiver detects the presence of the LNB's?
2/ Originally the 61.5 was plugged into the 110/119 LNB and then from that inside to the seperator which was going to the sat1 and sat2 inputs. Can I just run a cable from the 61.5 to the sat1 input and one from the 110/119 to the sat2 input instead?
3/ I used to have the 2nd TV hooked up using the reverse pass-through thingy that then had another separator outside that split the tv2 feed from the incoming satellite connection. I no longer have a need for that, so I just didn't plug either of the connectors back in. Do I need to tell the receiver that I did that?
4/ Do I need to change any settings when I'm just plugging one LNB into the receiver so that it doesn't try and look at all 3?
5/ On the signal meter screen, when I'm trying to find 61.5, should it be on dish 300? That's the only one that gives the on-screen values for the azimuth, elevation (it says skew is N/A which I'm guessing means 90).
6/ The larger issue I think is that due to the apartment complex' rules, I have to put the dishes on the balcony. We have 2 in our apartment on the second floor. One is on the South and East corner of the building, the other is on the South and West corner (meaning I have about a 235 degree viewfield centered on South, which is why we chose that specific unit since I knew that the dishes needed to be pointed SE and SW). It's a standard 8' ceiling with about an 18" overhang. When it talks about the dish's elevation being set to 50 degrees, does that mean that the satellite is literally 50 degrees from the horizon? My wife said that that's just where you point it, but the signal is another 22 degrees about that. In that case, I guess I need to figure out how low the dish needs to be in order to be able to see 72 degrees into the sky.
7/ When mounting on a pole, it only seems to work when the dish is on the top of the pole. I don't mind cutting the pole down lower if I know that that's what it needs, but since it's one of those things you can't undo, I'd rather wait until I know for sure that the lower height will receive the signal. Is there any way to mount the dish lower on the pole? When I tried it, unscrewing the horizontal bolt basically unlocked the elevation setting so that it's no longer pointed at the elevation it is set to. Am I just missing something?
8/ I have it plugged into the broadband just like it was before, but when I go to at least try and get the local OTA channels via an antenna is says it can't do so because there is no data connection. Does it have to be connected to a satellite to access that feauture? It's pulling an IP address, so I know that it has that data connection.
We've had Dish for about 8 months and have been extremely happy with it. We're also excited about moving to Orlando because now we can get NBC again. We can also get local OTA HD channels that we couldn't get in Gainesville, but also I think Orlando is on the list for HD locals off of 61.5 at some point.
Thanks for all the help! As you can tell, I've never done this myself, but being an engineer, I appreciate the opportunity to learn and understand it better. PS, sorry if I put this in the wrong forum. Feel free to move it.
Anyway, so I then went and bought some big planters, filled the bottom half with cement and mounted 2 poles 3.5' tall. (That leaves the rest of the depth of the planter for my wife to plan flowers in. I embedded 2 plastic pipes for drainage in each). I put the dishes on their respective poles, and then using the numbers from Dishpointer, I've put in the skew and elevation and the general direction.
Now the problem is that when I go the the signal meter on the receiver, it registers a signal of 0 for any of 61.5/110/119. I don't even know if it detects that the LNB's are connected.
So some questions:
1/ Is there a way to tell whether the receiver detects the presence of the LNB's?
2/ Originally the 61.5 was plugged into the 110/119 LNB and then from that inside to the seperator which was going to the sat1 and sat2 inputs. Can I just run a cable from the 61.5 to the sat1 input and one from the 110/119 to the sat2 input instead?
3/ I used to have the 2nd TV hooked up using the reverse pass-through thingy that then had another separator outside that split the tv2 feed from the incoming satellite connection. I no longer have a need for that, so I just didn't plug either of the connectors back in. Do I need to tell the receiver that I did that?
4/ Do I need to change any settings when I'm just plugging one LNB into the receiver so that it doesn't try and look at all 3?
5/ On the signal meter screen, when I'm trying to find 61.5, should it be on dish 300? That's the only one that gives the on-screen values for the azimuth, elevation (it says skew is N/A which I'm guessing means 90).
6/ The larger issue I think is that due to the apartment complex' rules, I have to put the dishes on the balcony. We have 2 in our apartment on the second floor. One is on the South and East corner of the building, the other is on the South and West corner (meaning I have about a 235 degree viewfield centered on South, which is why we chose that specific unit since I knew that the dishes needed to be pointed SE and SW). It's a standard 8' ceiling with about an 18" overhang. When it talks about the dish's elevation being set to 50 degrees, does that mean that the satellite is literally 50 degrees from the horizon? My wife said that that's just where you point it, but the signal is another 22 degrees about that. In that case, I guess I need to figure out how low the dish needs to be in order to be able to see 72 degrees into the sky.
7/ When mounting on a pole, it only seems to work when the dish is on the top of the pole. I don't mind cutting the pole down lower if I know that that's what it needs, but since it's one of those things you can't undo, I'd rather wait until I know for sure that the lower height will receive the signal. Is there any way to mount the dish lower on the pole? When I tried it, unscrewing the horizontal bolt basically unlocked the elevation setting so that it's no longer pointed at the elevation it is set to. Am I just missing something?
8/ I have it plugged into the broadband just like it was before, but when I go to at least try and get the local OTA channels via an antenna is says it can't do so because there is no data connection. Does it have to be connected to a satellite to access that feauture? It's pulling an IP address, so I know that it has that data connection.
We've had Dish for about 8 months and have been extremely happy with it. We're also excited about moving to Orlando because now we can get NBC again. We can also get local OTA HD channels that we couldn't get in Gainesville, but also I think Orlando is on the list for HD locals off of 61.5 at some point.
Thanks for all the help! As you can tell, I've never done this myself, but being an engineer, I appreciate the opportunity to learn and understand it better. PS, sorry if I put this in the wrong forum. Feel free to move it.
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