How can I improve my signal?

[HDTV Rookie]

I have 5 receivers in my home with 2 sats (61.5 is a must carry in my area), all of the gear outside is Dish Pro. Since none of my receivers are dual tuners, I have 2 DP 34 switches. The first DP 34 houses my 508, 811 and a 301. The second DP34 is being fed through the first switch and has 2 301s on it. The signals for the receivers on the first DP34 are strong, anywhere from 90-105, but when I look at the receivers on the second DP 34, the signals degrade from 33% to 60%.

One of the 301s on the second DP 34 is up in my daughter's room, I get signals in there from 64-84, but the TV in the basement is the worst. I can only get signals from 44-66. In fact at time that 44 is even weaker than that and I can not get the channel. The weakest signal in the basement comes in on sat 119 transponder 18, that's the transponder channel 170 comes in on (one of the kids channels)

I have swapped out cables, I have swapped out receivers, I even swapped the input at the switch, but nothing seems to work. Could it be that the second DP 34 might be bad.

Does anyone in here know what the average loss should be when a switch is fed through another. I am sure that a 60% loss is just too much.

I had Dish come out a few months ago when this issue first was happening with the first 301 on the second switch, the tech claimed that the sat inputs were done wrong. They were setup with 110 being the main, then 119, then 61.5. he claims that 119 should be the main. As far as I remember in the past, 110 was always the main sat, is he right. It seemed to work for a bit, but now the issue is back and on the other receiver on the second switch. This issue is getting quite tiresome.

I have no faith in the company Dishes has continiously sent out, if they have to come out again, this would be the 6th visit by them to my home since I moved into it 8 months ago. (new house, they did all of the install work)

Any help would be welcomed.

Thx

 

[Poke]

Hmm well haveing that many receivers could be part of the problem but not for sure!As far as the 110 being the main I think that the 119 is post to be the main that does sound right. But again have that many receivers hooke up you might take a performance hit have that many. On the cable side I would make sure you have a straight cable ran from all the rooms that have the receivers and no spliters at all due to that can reduce your performance. Anyway hope that helped some good luck with everything and if I hear anything will post for you!

 

[HDTV Rookie]

This is a new house, so the entire house was pre-wired, meaning all of the cables run directly from the wall outlets to the main cable connection bar in my basement.

Now b/c the guy that did the install of the switches decided to place the switches on the opposite side of the room from where all of my cables terminated, they had to place a barrel connector and a 6 foot jumper to the switches

 

[Poke]

Hmm might be issue with you haveing swithces installed. If you can if not thats fine just a suggestion have you tried things with out haveing the switches. For example if you can test how your singal strength is with the receiver plug into the wall jack with that jack haveing a straight connection to the dish. Which means that that cable in the wall where the reciever is not passing through any swithches or anything else. To me sounds like your singal is getting strip down some where which means its going to loose some of its boost before it get to the connection at the wall jack.

 

[boba]

I have 5 receivers in my home with 2 sats (61.5 is a must carry in my area), all of the gear outside is Dish Pro. Since none of my receivers are dual tuners, I have 2 DP 34 switches. The first DP 34 houses my 508, 811 and a 301. The second DP34 is being fed through the first switch and has 2 301s on it. The signals for the receivers on the first DP34 are strong, anywhere from 90-105, but when I look at the receivers on the second DP 34, the signals degrade from 33% to 60%.

One of the 301s on the second DP 34 is up in my daughter's room, I get signals in there from 64-84, but the TV in the basement is the worst. I can only get signals from 44-66. In fact at time that 44 is even weaker than that and I can not get the channel. The weakest signal in the basement comes in on sat 119 transponder 18, that's the transponder channel 170 comes in on (one of the kids channels)

I have swapped out cables, I have swapped out receivers, I even swapped the input at the switch, but nothing seems to work. Could it be that the second DP 34 might be bad.

Does anyone in here know what the average loss should be when a switch is fed through another. I am sure that a 60% loss is just too much.

I had Dish come out a few months ago when this issue first was happening with the first 301 on the second switch, the tech claimed that the sat inputs were done wrong. They were setup with 110 being the main, then 119, then 61.5. he claims that 119 should be the main. As far as I remember in the past, 110 was always the main sat, is he right. It seemed to work for a bit, but now the issue is back and on the other receiver on the second switch. This issue is getting quite tiresome.

I have no faith in the company Dishes has continiously sent out, if they have to come out again, this would be the 6th visit by them to my home since I moved into it 8 months ago. (new house, they did all of the install work)

Any help would be welcomed.

Thx

On the first DP-34 you have one port open connect the basement receiver with the lowest signal to this open port if the signal increases it would indicate the switch is bad. If the signal stays low then a cabling problem is indicated.

 

[HDTV Rookie]

On the first DP-34 you have one port open connect the basement receiver with the lowest signal to this open port if the signal increases it would indicate the switch is bad. If the signal stays low then a cabling problem is indicated.

Boba

Guess I can do that, but the final available port on the first DP 34 is prewired to my master bedroom. I do not have a receiver in my master bedroom at this time, but unfortunately, I do not know which port is my bedroom.

I will have to turn on all of my TV's and just unplug the cables 1 by 1 to find out which one is the available one, then the smart person would label the cables (knew I should have gotten a brother P touch)

But aside of that, let me ask, I would expect that if you are using a master-slave relationship where one switch is feeding another, I would expect there to be some signal loss, the question is, how much should I be expecting.

 

[boba]

Boba

Guess I can do that, but the final available port on the first DP 34 is prewired to my master bedroom. I do not have a receiver in my master bedroom at this time, but unfortunately, I do not know which port is my bedroom.

I will have to turn on all of my TV's and just unplug the cables 1 by 1 to find out which one is the available one, then the smart person would label the cables (knew I should have gotten a brother P touch)

But aside of that, let me ask, I would expect that if you are using a master-slave relationship where one switch is feeding another, I would expect there to be some signal loss, the question is, how much should I be expecting.

Minimal the DP-34 can be cascaded through 3 switches, the signal loss you are describing would never work for a third DP-34. You can eliminate port 1, the first port has to be powered on a DP-34 so if the unused cable was on port 1 the switch probably would't work.

 

[bcshields]

Ok.. Here;s what you should do to troubleshoot.. not sure if you've done any of this.

1) Swap the 34 switches. If the problem swaps over, bad switch. If you still have signal issues...

2) Check the wires, jumpers and the wires to the rcvr. You said it was pre-wired. Is it RG-6 swept to 2250 minimum? It'll be stamped on the wire. If not.. bad news. Replace the wire

3) If that checks out, check your connectors on the lines you're getting low signal from. If you have wallplates, check those as well. if your barrels in your wallplates aren't swept to 2250, that'll do it to.

4) Is the total length from the rcvr to the dish over 200 feet? Might just do it.

 

[HDTV Rookie]

BC

I have already done all that, I discovered it was a bad DP 34 switch. When I switched my 301 from the 2nd dp 34 to the 1st, the signal jumped from 44 to 87 with the same cables. Granted, 87 is not a super signal, but the 50% loss alone is enough to tell me that the switch is bad.

Once the switch is replaced, I will look at possibly replacing the cabling or connectors to see if I can get that signal up to the high 90's