Audio dropouts with OTA and HR20 but not H10-250

[dcwebman]

I have a Channel Master CM 4228 UHF antenna sitting on my apartment's patio with a clear view to the OTA towers and I get a great signal. It has about 15 feet of RG6 to a high quality splitter that splits the signal with about 5 feet of RG6 to a HR20-700 and HR10-250 that are located by each other. Lately I've been getting audio dropouts on the HR20 on different OTA channels. It got so annoying last night that I switched to the HR10-250 to see if the problem was there and it wasn't.

I thought that the OTA tuner was better in the HR20 but something is going on here so that apparently is not true. The HR20 has the 168 release.

Unfortunately I have lived in this apartment for a little over a month so I can't give much background history like it started with a certain release or such.

I am in the process of getting the HR10-250 replaced with another HR20 in preparation for the Sept. channels but I don't know now if I can't get my OTA channels good. Any suggestions?

 

[Jimbo]

I have a Channel Master CM 4228 UHF antenna sitting on my apartment's patio with a clear view to the OTA towers and I get a great signal. It has about 15 feet of RG6 to a high quality splitter that splits the signal with about 5 feet of RG6 to a HR20-700 and HR10-250 that are located by each other. Lately I've been getting audio dropouts on the HR20 on different OTA channels. It got so annoying last night that I switched to the HR10-250 to see if the problem was there and it wasn't.

I thought that the OTA tuner was better in the HR20 but something is going on here so that apparently is not true. The HR20 has the 168 release.

Unfortunately I have lived in this apartment for a little over a month so I can't give much background history like it started with a certain release or such.

I am in the process of getting the HR10-250 replaced with another HR20 in preparation for the Sept. channels but I don't know now if I can't get my OTA channels good. Any suggestions?

IF you are a CE 'er, did you d/l the CE last night, if so, did it help your drop outs problem ?

Jimbo

 

[bonscott87]

Have you tried removing the splitter and just go direct into the HR20?

 

[texasbrit]

Your problem could be caused by the HR20 tuner being more sensitive than the one in the HR10. If you are getting multipath, the secondary signal may be too weak to cause a problem on the HR10 but the extra gain on the HR20 may push you into a problem area. Or there may be an interference source that is below the noise level on the HR10 but not on the HR20. You don't say how close you are to the transmitters - the CM4228 is a great antenna (I have one) but it is not good at multipath rejection. Do you have a preamp on your CM4228?

If it's a multipath issue a minor adjustment in the direction of the CM4228 could solve the problem. You don't say what your signal strengths are (signal meter numbers) but if your signal into the HR20 is very strong, you may also be able to eliminate the dropouts by putting an attenuator into the feed to the HR20.

 

[dcwebman]

In answer to questions:
- I haven't tried any of the CE's
- I didn't try removing the splitter. I did an OTA signal strength on the HR20 for various channels and it ranged anywhere in the low 90's to 100%. In fact for the channel that was bothering me the other night, it was always 100%.
- According to antennaweb, I'm about 30 miles from the towers (zip code 77379). I do not have a preamp on it as I didn't think I would need one with such a short run.
The suggestion of an attenuator may be something to try.

I have a replacement HR20 coming for the HR10-250 on 7/14 so I guess I'll see if there's a problem with that one too.

 

[texasbrit]

In answer to questions:
- I haven't tried any of the CE's
- I didn't try removing the splitter. I did an OTA signal strength on the HR20 for various channels and it ranged anywhere in the low 90's to 100%. In fact for the channel that was bothering me the other night, it was always 100%.
- According to antennaweb, I'm about 30 miles from the towers (zip code 77379). I do not have a preamp on it as I didn't think I would need one with such a short run.
The suggestion of an attenuator may be something to try.

I have a replacement HR20 coming for the HR10-250 on 7/14 so I guess I'll see if there's a problem with that one too.

The CE releases are very unlikely to have any effect on an OTA dropout problem.

Dropouts with a signal strength of 100 are very likely to be some sort of signal overload or multipath. My question about the preamp was to recommend you removed it if you had one, at 30 miles with a CM4228 a preamp can do more harm than good!
Post back when you have tried the attenuator.

 

[bonscott87]

And I suggested removing the splitter so that you can remove that as a possible suspect. Need to troubleshoot this down to the base parts you have.

Remove splitter.
Connect OTA direct to HR20. Audio problems persist?
Now connect OTA direct to HR10. Audio problems?

Now put the splitter back in, still audio problems on HR20 and not HR10? How about if you swap the outputs to go to the other receiver?

Doing this will eliminate the splitter as the problem (i.e. the splitter will reduce your signal and it could be enough that the HR20 doesn't like it).

 

[Jimbo]

Good catch Tex,
I was wrong with my analogy, I was thinking he was having trouble with audio drop outs on the D* supplied channels, but he's talking about OTA so yes the CE would not affect that.

(I got confused because I am having drop outs with just the D* HD channels, mpeg2, I thought he might be having the same problem.).

Jimbo

 

[dcwebman]

I forgot to mention that since it's an apartment, I have one of those under the window flat wire things that's basically a coax connector for each cable. I assume that would drop some of the signal strength. But I had too short a cable on the antenna going to the window connector so I changed it to a little longer cable that's actually RG6 Quad instead of RG6. At least so far on the channel that was really giving me problems last time, I did not see a problem last night. I'll keep watching and if I see the problem again, I'll try the attenuator and then splitter debugging.

Oh, even though I put audio dropouts as the problem, when it happens the video is also glitched.

 

[bonscott87]

Oh, even though I put audio dropouts as the problem, when it happens the video is also glitched.

This typically would mean you're not getting a good enough signal and the HR20 is losing it. Since it's gone away when you replaced the cable it's very possible you were getting some RF interferrence leaked into the old cable and the HR20 is probably more sensitive to it then the HR10. Think back in the day of analog OTA and how it would go all crazy when your mom would turn on the blender. Of course you may need to be over the age or 35 to even remember the days of no cable and OTA only.

 

[dcwebman]

Of course you may need to be over the age or 35 to even remember the days of no cable and OTA only.

What was cable? I grew up with only being able to receive the 3 network channels and one was snowy. It was a shock when I got to college and there was actually something called cable.

Of course the past couple days there hasn't really been anything to watch on network TV so I'll determine if that cable change really helped within the week. I also get the replacement HR20 for the HR10-250 in a couple weeks so I sure hope the cable solved that problem.