I too doubt your receiver is faulty, most likely you're not aimed precisely enough at the satellite. A phone app absolutely won't get you lined up good enough to scan anything in unless you're incredibly lucky.
When KE4EST said being an inch off in alignment can throw you off, he wasn't kidding, I'd actually say he was being too generous there, with a 31" dish, I'd say it's even less.
What Titanuim and KE4EST are telling you is good advice. With a known good transponder programmed into the receiver, take the receiver and a TV right out next to the dish and watch your quality bar as you move your dish and try and get it dialed in.
Don't assume when you set your elevation on your dish that the scale on the side of the dish is correct either. Usually it's close but rarely spot on, sometimes they're way off. A cheap angle meter helps with that.
Your receiver is showing signal, so that means your lnbf is connected and powered up and your receiver is most likely ok, that's all that signal bar is for, it has nothing to do with signal from a satellite. When you actually lock onto a transponder, your quality bar will light up, that's the actual "signal" from the satellite. When you see something in the quality bar, then you are getting something and fine tune your dish settings for best quality reading, then blind scan. Without a good transponder programmed into the receiver, you'll get no activity in the quality bar. You must enter a good transponder into the receiver.
Setting up your first dish is a pain but once you lock onto a satellite you'll understand how precise it has to be and then it becomes much easier. The first dish I setup was a 31" and for a few days I struggled with it until I finally locked onto something, after that, it wasnt bad at all. I had a lot of help from people on here, setting up that first dish.
If you need to double check what your elevation, azimuth and skew settings should be, dishpointer.com is good for that, just enter your zip and the sat you want to aim at.
Good luck, you'll get it!
