gdarwin said:
I think the rain was affecting your OTA reception. The other night SAT dropped but my OTA stayed on.
No, there is definitely something to this. I upgraded from an 811 & Dish 500 to a 211 & Dish 1000 a week or so ago. Yesterday we had nasty 40+mph winds. I was watching OTA through the 211 when the picture went out - still had audio, just no picture on both component & HDMI. I switched to a Dish HD channel - same thing, then a Dish SD channel & same thing. I pulled the plug on the 211 to do a hard re-boot. BTW I HATE the attached power cord on the 211; you have to dig down in the back of my componet rack to find the d*mn cord to unplug from the power strip.
Meanwhile while the 211 was unplugged I fired up my HTPC and OTA reception was just fine. Powered up the 211 and after signal aquisition & download guide, the picture was fine. But, about 45 minutes later the pciture went out again. Repeated the power down & reboot, and all was fine. The winds finally died down & no more problems. But, there is definitely something with a 211 that when something affects satellite reception it passes that on to the OTA feed. I assume this is the same for the 622 - same internal components as the 211, just DVR added?
In the meantime I'm just going to remove the OTA feed from the 211 and connect it directly to my HDTV with internal tuner. I originally feed OTA to my 811 because it could insert the digital stations right next to the Dish SD locals with guide. But I dropped locals when I upgraded - the SD locals PQ pales compared to my OTA digital stations, and I only used Dish SD locals once every few months when OTA reception failed (I'm in a 50+ mile fringe reception area). When you drop locals you don't get any program guide - just a description "Digital Programming". OTA digital stations at least give you a description of what's currently on.
