Help Setting Up HR-21 at Vacation Home

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metallo

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Aug 19, 2009
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Illinois
Hi everyone... I'm going on vacation for a couple weeks and I'm planning on taking my HR-21 receiver with me. The vacation home is equipped with the necessary dishes and wiring for HD service, but I have tried to set up my box there before and haven't been able to get it to work. The previous owner apparently had an HR-20. Basically, the last time I tried to set up my receiver there, the first problem I noticed was that there was only one line coming off the dish, so I didn't have two satellite inputs for my DVR. I didn't think this would be a problem and it would just mean that I couldn't watch one program and record another at the same time, so I just plugged the one available line into my HR21 and turned it on. It went through the whole startup routine and took a ridiculously long amount of time (like 15-20 minutes) to get going. Eventually it just gave me either no picture or consistently choppy picture with freezing... I was never actually able to get a normal picture (same deal with the sound, btw). I did try playing my saved DVR programs, and they worked just fine.

Does anyone know what the problem is and how I can get this to work (if that's possible)? I'm probably missing something really simple, so sorry if this seems like an ignorant question.
 
Start with realigning the dish. Also it would be very nice to know what the dish is AT9/AU9 (slimline) 3 LNB/5LNB standard or SWM.
 
Start with realigning the dish. Also it would be very nice to know what the dish is AT9/AU9 (slimline) 3 LNB/5LNB standard or SWM.

I'm not at the home right now, but I'm almost 100% positive that it's a Slimline dish. Also, I don't think dish alignment is the problem (not that I would be able to realign it myself anyway). There was another receiver hooked up shortly before I tried with the HR21 last time, and it worked perfectly... the problem was only with my HR21. At the time I thought that maybe I had to have two inputs for the receiver to start up properly, but I've been told that the HR21 can, in fact, function with just one input, so I really don't know what the problem would be. Do I need a converter, completely different wiring, something else? Thanks for any help.
 
Some additional info... my receiver is an HR21-200 (HD DVR). I'm told the previous receiver that worked was an HR20-600 (HD but not a DVR).
 
You need 2 cables from the dish going to the receiver. You may also need a BBC....unless you are using a SWM switch/LNB which is really new technology.
 
Got it working with just one input! I realized that I just had to play with some of the satellite setup settings. Why didn't I just try that last year???!!! The dish at the vacation home is a Slimline 3, so I just had to change the dish type, and I also changed the tuner setting from dual to single. Works just fine, getting all my channels!
 
It only needs 2 feeds if you want 2 tuners active. All HRs will work as single tuners you just lose the main reasons for getting a DVR.
 
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