Confusing reception problem

[ytseryan]

I have a dish 500 system with a 501 receiver, and I've been having a strange problem the past few weeks. I very rarely watch the satellite (thanks to Netflix), but I do watch football games every saturday. For the past 3 weeks in a row, the only time the box has been on has been each saturday afternoon. When I turn it on, the satellite reception for the first 15 mins is absolutly horrible, in and out, totally unwatchable. Then all of the sudden, it's great, no problem for the remainder of the time it's on. The specific channel I have it on is 416 (119 bird I belive). If it was a misalignment problem, why then does it suddenly fix itself? There have been no weather issues, no line of sight issues... It's getting very frustrating when you only watch it once a week, and it happens each time.

Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[SimpleSimon]

My first thought is to ask whether you are leaving the unit in stand-by with power available, or if it unplugged. Second is whether it's always the same time of day - thinking there might be some temperature problems. You don't have a Twin LNBF marked CCS9601 do you?

 

[ytseryan]

The unit does always have power supplied, and it's turned off in standby mode. Time of day is usually late morning/early afternoon, altho once has been evening time. No other components are on for any period of time before the sat box, causing it to heat up prematurely. I do have a twin LNBF, but I have no idea if thats the same one you're talking about.

 

[SimpleSimon]

Well, it certainly bears checking for the bad LNBF. E* will replace it for you if that's it. The CCS9601 batch is temperature sensitive - although your symptoms don't quite match up.

I guess I want a better description of the problem. Pixellation? Freeze-ups? Something else? Could it be the TV itself screwing up?

Have you gone into Point Dish IMMEDIATELY on power up to see if the signal is crapping out? That's the road I started on, but maybe it's nothing to do with that.