Hopper OTA won't lock

[primetimeguy]

Now that football season is up and running and new fall shows are about to start I've been watching more OTA channels. I have noticed that sometimes (40% of the time?) that when I tune to an OTA channel it will not lock, rather it drops out every 3 second or so. If I switch channels and then back it fixes it. I happened to go in and check signal levels and found all big 4 at 100%.

I have never seen this before. I put in a 9way splitter to drop the signal 10db and 3 of 4 are still at 100%. I don't believe it. I have pushed 90s before but I am 30 miles from the tower.

So not sure if it is the apparent high signal causing issues or what. Weird thing is this does not happen when viewing the OTA channel from the connected Joey.

I suspect a software update along the way tweaked things for OTA tuner as I did not have this issue last year. Or a hopper issue?

 

[Scherrman]

Antenna signals can be very tricky. Even though the the Hopper says your signal is 100% it may not be a good signal. Do you have an amplifier at all with that splitter? It is possible you can have too high of a signal and cause drop outs as well. If you take out the splitter and just go direct to the Hopper does it make a difference?

 

[primetimeguy]

Antenna signals can be very tricky. Even though the the Hopper says your signal is 100% it may not be a good signal. Do you have an amplifier at all with that splitter? It is possible you can have too high of a signal and cause drop outs as well. If you take out the splitter and just go direct to the Hopper does it make a difference?

No amp. With the splitter in place it is much worse, hard to get it to lock at all. I added the splitter simply to reduce the signal strength since the hopper is saying 100% for channels. It is still 100% even with the splitter in place. And keep in mind when I added the Hopper and OTA module over a year ago none of the channels were at 100%, a couple were near 90.

 

[Scherrman]

Hmmm, maybe there is an issue with the OTA module.

 

[primetimeguy]

Hmmm, maybe there is an issue with the OTA module.

Thought that may be the case but the connected Joey does not have the issue.

Another thing, OTA recordings do not experience any issues. It is only when I try to watch a live OTA channel. Maybe it is an HDMI issue somehow but only with OTA channels?

 

[Scherrman]

That's a possibility. It doesn't sound like the tuner is the problem now. Maybe there is a format problem with the picture from OTA and your HDMI. Sounds like you're getting it narrowed down.

 

[primetimeguy]

I may have solved my issue. My OTA signal was running throw a power condition with the rest of my components, and has been for about 5 years. I know when the hopper was installed they said to removed the sat signal from it so I did but left the OTA. Today I moved the OTA off of it as well and things appear much better. I get one initial blip as it locks the channel but after that it seems to work fine. I even removed the 10db attenuator I had in the line. I'll keep an eye on it for a while.

 

[Scherrman]

Thanks for the update.

 

[primetimeguy]

Looks like it is not solved after all. Noticed today when it w happening signal level would jump from 80 to 100. Only way to fix is switch to another OTA channel, but that's a problem when recording the channel.

 

[primetimeguy]

Back to trying to solve this. I'm starting to think it is not OTA dropout or tuner problem but an audio dropout from the Hopper. I say that because when watching the same channel via the Joey on another TV I do not get the dropouts. When watching on the Hopper and hit the Info button and view the signal strength I get dropouts almost every 5 seconds, so it gets worse! I thought I recall people reporting this before but I cannot find it. So I'm leaning toward asking for a replacement Hopper to fix the issue. I may drag my other Hopper downstairs and test that theory but what a pain. Anyone have any other ideas?

 

[primetimeguy]

Watched a show last night a couple hours after it recorded OTA. Seemed to have about 2 dropouts during the show in between each commercial break, so maybe 10 of them. What u found interesting is on a couple of them I could rewind and watch again without a dropout. All the rest the dropout was still there. So maybe I have two issues, OTA signal dropouts and other audio dropouts. Or maybe problems with the drive and sometimes it hiccups during playback in addition to recording. But this only happens with OTA channels.