D* tech just left my house and I'm confused now...

[belias21]

I live north of Miami and I have an HR10-250. The past 2 weeks or so, my OTA reception on WSVN (Fox) and WPLG (ABC) have been very weak at night. I called D* to have them send a tech out and have a look at my antenna. The guys that came out was clueless, but he put me on the phone with his supervisor that had some interesting information for me. The guy told me that, because the HD locals were in the process of being setup on the satellite, that the stations were intentionally dropping their signal strength at certain times of the day. This makes no sent to me whatsoever... He told me that on April 1, the locals would be available and that all I would have to do is call D* and get the upgraded dish. I reminded him that I had the HR10-250 and that this receiver would not be able to get the MPEG4 channels. He advised me that his impression was that there would be a software upgrade for the HR10 that would allow it to get these channels. Since that completely goes against everything I have read on this site, I thought I'd get some feedback on it from you guys.

Question 1: MPEG4 upgrade available for HR10-250?
Question 2: What is the correlation between HD locals lighting up on the dish and the OTA signal strength degrading a couple weeks before?!?! Shouldn't these be essentially unrelated events?

 

[dragon002]

dont know about the upgrade.

a lot of radio stations cut back to half power at night, tv stations?????

 

[sksatellite]

My sister in law does has the ITA antenna at attic, regular reception on local channels are real bad, but all those HDTV or DTVs from the same local stations are perfect.

 

[Upgrade Lately?]

That guy was full of it.
The HR10-250 is not, nor ever will be capable of handling mpeg 4.

 

[belias21]

That guy was full of it.
The HR10-250 is not, nor ever will be capable of handling mpeg 4.

My thoughts exactly.

 

[moonman]

Question 1: MPEG4 upgrade available for HR10-250?
Question 2: What is the correlation between HD locals lighting up on the dish and the OTA signal strength degrading a couple weeks before?!?! Shouldn't these be essentially unrelated events?

--------------------
1.There can not be a software upgrade for the 10-250..it would need a hardware
upgrade(new chips etc) for MPEG4.
2.Many people in your area, are reporting weak signals from WSVN & WPLG
especially since Hurricane Wilma blew thru in late Oct.(me included)..You got a lot
of mis-information fed to you.

 

[Jimbo]

I live north of Miami and I have an HR10-250. The past 2 weeks or so, my OTA reception on WSVN (Fox) and WPLG (ABC) have been very weak at night. I called D* to have them send a tech out and have a look at my antenna. The guys that came out was clueless, but he put me on the phone with his supervisor that had some interesting information for me. The guy told me that, because the HD locals were in the process of being setup on the satellite, that the stations were intentionally dropping their signal strength at certain times of the day. This makes no sent to me whatsoever... He told me that on April 1, the locals would be available and that all I would have to do is call D* and get the upgraded dish. I reminded him that I had the HR10-250 and that this receiver would not be able to get the MPEG4 channels. He advised me that his impression was that there would be a software upgrade for the HR10 that would allow it to get these channels. Since that completely goes against everything I have read on this site, I thought I'd get some feedback on it from you guys.

Question 1: MPEG4 upgrade available for HR10-250?
Question 2: What is the correlation between HD locals lighting up on the dish and the OTA signal strength degrading a couple weeks before?!?! Shouldn't these be essentially unrelated events?

Give you local stations a call on Monday, ask to talk to the cheif engeneer, ask him if they are running at full power, alot of stations are not up to full strengh, not required technically yet.

Ask him if he knows anything about your D* issue also, but he probably has no idea about what D* is doing.

As you mentioned, they should be entirely seperate issues.

Jimbo

 

[hdtvtechno]

Yes i heard some stations run at low power levels at night

 

[johnml]

i had a OTA reciever and had trouble getting those channels even during the day ( ft. lauderdale ) ch 7 and ch 10 being vhf, all the others being uhf ???

 

[Jimbo]

i had a OTA reciever and had trouble getting those channels even during the day ( ft. lauderdale ) ch 7 and ch 10 being vhf, all the others being uhf ???

Yes, I was not aware that they would up the signal strengh at night .
The last time I spoke with a local engeneer, they were not at full power yet. (not all engeneers will let you know that)
I had a lot of trouble picking up a perticular channel anytime, then I spoke with them and found out that they were only broadcasting thier digital signal in the evening, but that was in the very begining when my locals were just getting fired up. (OTA not D*)

Jimbo

 

[lou_do]

I had a problem like that getting the HD locals, in the Orlando area. The signals would be good at times then would drop and the picture pixelize, at other times. After trying everything you could imagine, I changed out the 300 ohm to 75 ohm transformer, on the antenna. After that, no more problem and my signal levels on the local HD and digitals channels almost doubled. That was about 6 months ago and haven't had any problem since.

It may not be a cure for all, but was the problem with my system. Just wanted to throw that out there for a thing to check when having reception problems.