New Voomer...Need Help

[Nickinohio]

I had Voom installed last week, and the local install company has been here twice to try to fix the OTA problems. I live 29 miles from the towers, and I have the Winegard Sensar II amplified antenna mounted on the wrong side of my house. I have a two story house, but they mounted it with the dish on the side of the house (6-8 feet high). Could this be part of the problem? Should they try it on the roof with a pole or something?

Also, they are using 1 line and a diplexor. I asked the installer today to try a second line through the window without the diplexor, but she said the power dropped to zero. Should she have used some sort of inline power supply? This person was completely useless, and left without changing anything. This was after she was 2.5 hours passed the acknowledged timeframe.

The manager is supposedly coming tomorrow morning to look at my situation, and I would like some help from the resident experts here. Any suggestions. Here are the general OTA stats. Quality 0-20, with wild fluctuations. Power 60 on ABC, NBC, CBS, and 0 for Fox.

Any thoughts?
Nick

 

[Sean Mota]

That's kind of weird situation. Did she try to move the antenna to see if that made any difference? OTA is not an exact science and sometimes relocating the antenna or rotating it does the job. If you take the diplexer out of the equation you really don't need anything to power it. I have an antenna directly to the OTA module with no pre-amp or anything. I am only 15-20 miles away from the stations.

Two things to try:

Move the antenna by rotating it or recolate the whole antenna.

 

[Sean Mota]

By the way, welcome to the forum.

 

[Nickinohio]

Thanks, Sean. Great forum here. I will have them work on it in the morning. Voom customer service was great, but the local install company is not very happy working with Voom.

BTW - Why doesn't the Winegard amplifier need some source of power?

 

[sat4me]

Thanks, Sean. Great forum here. I will have them work on it in the morning. Voom customer service was great, but the local install company is not very happy working with Voom.

BTW - Why doesn't the Winegard amplifier need some source of power?

The diplexer/combiner is absolutely necessary to allow power to the Sensar II antenna, from the STB voltage. Voom is shipping this new antenna without any external power supply and now with an "S" extention bracket that can only be mounted to the back of the dish mount. This causes obvious problems for the installer and the installation. The original Stealth antenna was shipped with a separate installable amplifier board, plug in power supply if needed and most important, a separate mount to mount on a different location on the house if necessary.

The problem today:

1) This new "s" bracket cannot be independently mounted on a different part of the house and must be attached to the dish mount. The installer has no other solution and must install the OTA based on the best location for VOOM SAT LOS... No separate power supply is shipped to the installer.

2) Sometimes the SAT dish has to be mounted low and many times in a location that the OTA will not receive any or all of the broadcast signal. Really smart design, huh...

3) Don't always blame the installer, because the supplier has provided no other solution. No wonder your installer is not happy working with VOOM, they change stuff mid-stream and then expect the guy/gal on site to figure it out, and look like the idiots when they weren't sent equipment to provide the best solution.

You'll have to call VOOM and ask for a complete antenna upgrade with a separate mount for the installer to mount your OTA on a different part of the house.. Sounds silly you have to do all that.. Too bad VOOM can't get it together with their equipment designers and providers..

 

[Slick]

My sensor 11 antenna is 30' from my Voom dish and has it own mounting bracket to the roof, it does not need to be connected to the dish.. I am no OTA expert but I can tell you what I have.. Cya Slick

 

[mkatts]

If the STB provides power to the OTA ant, Can I eliminate the tiny preamp they installed? I don't have diplexor's. but the signal is split to go to two STB's.

 

[sat4me]

Sensar II

To slick and mkatts:

Slick:
From what I've been told, by good authority, the latest shipments to all installers is the Sensar II comes shipped in one plain brown box complete with the OTA, "s" bracket and adapter plate/clamp to co-mount on the back of the dish mount itself. The "s" bracket is designed to mount to a standard foot-mount sysytem, however the installers are no longer being shipped those separate mounts. Your installer may have had some left over from the previous Stealth shipments he received, so lucky you..

mkatts:
You may have been installed prior to the past 2 weeks. If your installer ran separate cables for the OTA, witch sounds as if did, and had left over in-line power inserters, then he would not have used diplexers, so your OTA is still receiving power/voltage from that.. Hopefully that little inserter won't burn out anytime soon..

My recent post is to advise what VOOM is now shipping. It's not at all the same from 2 weeks ago. So for all the new installs coming up, heres what to expect, as from my previous post.

 

[Slick]

Hey there Sat4me it seems you know allot about Voom setup, I went and bought a VU120xr Radio Shack antenna which says it is good for 90 miles UHF and 120 VHF, but when I hooked it up I got nuthin no channels at all.. The towers are 47 miles away at the most, I think I am going to need a preamp.

Sean says he has the next size bigger and he he getting all is channels, do you think that power inserter is not powerfull enough to work with that new antenna? Right now with the sensor 11 antenna I am getting 4 out of 5 channels so I went and bought the new one to get them all..Thanks for any help.. Cya Slick

 

[Scotty]

My installer started by mounting my antenna right below the dish, hanging off the mast. It was pointing in the same directioin as the satellite, which was about 45 degrees off from the direction in which my tv station's atnenna's are. I asked him at the beginning to mount it in the attic. I was getting no ota's from the dish mounted location. I finally convince him to try a test from out an upstairs window that faced the tv stations. It pullled in everything beautifully, and so reluctantly, he agreed to the attic install. At first, he tried to install the antenna at the highest point in the attic, which was dead center, on the ridge line, but I again got no signals. He finally moved it to the eaves, again pointing towards the stations, with nothing but vinyl siding between it and the open air outside, and I started picking up everything again.

The moral is, you don't want any energy absorbing materials beween your antenna and the stations if you can help it. You definitely need to have your installer move the antenna.

 

[sat4me]

Hey there Sat4me it seems you know allot about Voom setup, I went and bought a VU120xr Radio Shack antenna which says it is good for 90 miles UHF and 120 VHF, but when I hooked it up I got nuthin no channels at all.. The towers are 47 miles away at the most, I think I am going to need a preamp.

Sean says he has the next size bigger and he he getting all is channels, do you think that power inserter is not powerfull enough to work with that new antenna? Right now with the sensor 11 antenna I am getting 4 out of 5 channels so I went and bought the new one to get them all..Thanks for any help.. Cya Slick

I hang around one of the big VOOM installers in Colorado every so often at their office and pick up stuff. I used to be an installer several years ago and still maintain my SBCA 1,2,3 certificate for fun.

I do know alot about many sat. systems going back to the BUD's years ago. Did the first initial Beta tests with both DTV and DishN back in the day, being from Colorado has had it's advantage, as both have main facilities here.

Anyway, I have no idea what the RS antenna you have is, or what it's capacity is. What I can tell you is to make a determination as to using antennaweb.org to find out if all of your channels available are in the same general compass direction. Check the box for DIGITAL channels only; Are they UHF or both UHF/VHF.
If you have all UHF, the best antenna avilable for 47 miles, at least what's been found to work the best is the 8-bay.

WARNING:::: The OTA itself is not always the problem and the software/channel mapping freq. and other VOOM/MOTO problems exist and sometimes are intermittant and is NOT the fault of the OTA. You may want to wait to see if your OTA is working fine and the problem may be your software/mapping before going through all the motions of switching your OTA.

Hopefully when the next software download is sent to us it is supposed to have auto-scanning for our OTA channels. In otherwords, if the signal is being recieved by the OTA, it SHOULD appear on the VOOM receiver, HOPEFULLY... It's very apparent, VOOM is still "building" their system and software and until they get it right, and who knows when that may be, we all will be suffering a little with their "build". But hey, where else can you get so much HDTV!