I just switched from dish network to directv because I was tired of dealing with the crappy interface on the 921. My only problem is that I can get all digital stations with a roof mounted antenna on the 921, but when I hook the antenna into the hr10-250, I can only get a signal lock on 1 of 5 stations the 921 could get. Anyone else had problems like this?
OTA signal on HR10-250
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Give more info like your location, how far away are the towers and what sort of antenna are you using now, preamps etc. Someone here should be able to help you.--Ray
I just got my HDTivo installed today. I live in the Charleston, SC area, and I am able to get all of my OTA digitals using the built-in "Primary Network Area". It is noce that they have all of the channels preconfigured so you don't need to scan, but they still allow you scan for anything that they don't have prebuilt. For instance, my local NBC affiliate has recently started broadcasting their 24-hour weather radar on subchannel 2 (2.2 or 2-2, however you want to call it). This channel is not in the Primary Network Area, but is available now that I scanned for local OTA channels.
Hope you get yours figured out...it is nice to be able to record OTA HD!!
Hope you get yours figured out...it is nice to be able to record OTA HD!!
Well, after getting a replacement unit from directv which didn't fix the problem, I finally got it working. I noticed the signal would go way up when I pulled the coax out of the tivo. So with only the middle part of the coax in I could get signal almost as good as the dish 921 dvr. I then put a splitter in the coax, and then both recievers got good signal. I then narrowed the problem down to a grounding issue, as the dish dvr has a ground plug, tivo does not. I hooked a grounding wire up to one of the torx screws on the back of the tivo, and am using a piece of coax with part of the shielding stripped off and it gets great signal strength. I have no idea why, but this is what works for me.
Just FYI: grounding, or the lack of it, had nothing to do with why you couldn't pull in the OTA signals. Because the problem that you're having is so common for HD-Tivo customers, for the benefit of everyone else, I'm going to break down your problem...
1. Your dish 921 dvr had good OTA signal.
2. You were installing the HD Tivo at the same outlets and had the same antenna hooked up as before.
3. Replacing the Tivo did not help. The replacement box had the same issue.
4. (IMPORTANT!! ---->) You noticed the signal would go way up when you pulled the coax out of the tivo.
5. With only the middle part of the coax (presumably the copper conductor with everything else stripped back) hooked into the antenna input you got pretty good signal.
6. Everything else you did after this (splitter, grounding to the torx lug) made the signal a little better.
The antenna input for the HD Tivo is very, very sensitive. I'm not sure why they engineered it like this- one guess is that because of the way they internally split the signal to the tuners, there is an internal amplifier that boosts the signal before or after that split. The effect this has is that if your signal strength is reasonably high (read good), there is an excellent chance that the signal overdrives the tuners and you'll get nothing, a few channels (which are almost always the weaker strength ones that are located in your respective markets) or wildly fluctuating signals on all channels that tend to resemble multipath at first, but get better when the attenna is aimed in ways that would usually make multipath worse.
Again, this is such a common issue that I wish we could sticky this; what you need is an attenuator to cool the signal down. A tech called me 2 weeks ago about an HD Tivo installed with an E-A 2-bay UHF antenna at a range of 4.7-4.8 miles to the broadcast towers. I asked him if he counseled the customer that he needed an attenuator? The tech replied that he already had a -6db one and that it still did not work. I asked him to hook up a pair of rabbit ears and to check what the signal strength did then. He said it came right in at 85-91%. I advised him that the customer would need a 2nd -6db attenuator. I called customer the next day and he said everything worked just fine since he purchased a second attenuator.
Anecdotally, I've heard from and talked to customer who experienced this issue from as far as 18 miles from broadcast towers!
Find an old set of rabbit ears, hook it up and youll be able to see if you need an attenuator.
benj said:Just FYI: grounding, or the lack of it, had nothing to do with why you couldn't pull in the OTA signals. Because the problem that you're having is so common for HD-Tivo customers, for the benefit of everyone else, I'm going to break down your problem...
1. Your dish 921 dvr had good OTA signal.
2. You were installing the HD Tivo at the same outlets and had the same antenna hooked up as before.
3. Replacing the Tivo did not help. The replacement box had the same issue.
4. (IMPORTANT!! ---->) You noticed the signal would go way up when you pulled the coax out of the tivo.
5. With only the middle part of the coax (presumably the copper conductor with everything else stripped back) hooked into the antenna input you got pretty good signal.
6. Everything else you did after this (splitter, grounding to the torx lug) made the signal a little better.
The antenna input for the HD Tivo is very, very sensitive. I'm not sure why they engineered it like this- one guess is that because of the way they internally split the signal to the tuners, there is an internal amplifier that boosts the signal before or after that split. The effect this has is that if your signal strength is reasonably high (read good), there is an excellent chance that the signal overdrives the tuners and you'll get nothing, a few channels (which are almost always the weaker strength ones that are located in your respective markets) or wildly fluctuating signals on all channels that tend to resemble multipath at first, but get better when the attenna is aimed in ways that would usually make multipath worse.
Again, this is such a common issue that I wish we could sticky this; what you need is an attenuator to cool the signal down. A tech called me 2 weeks ago about an HD Tivo installed with an E-A 2-bay UHF antenna at a range of 4.7-4.8 miles to the broadcast towers. I asked him if he counseled the customer that he needed an attenuator? The tech replied that he already had a -6db one and that it still did not work. I asked him to hook up a pair of rabbit ears and to check what the signal strength did then. He said it came right in at 85-91%. I advised him that the customer would need a 2nd -6db attenuator. I called customer the next day and he said everything worked just fine since he purchased a second attenuator.
Anecdotally, I've heard from and talked to customer who experienced this issue from as far as 18 miles from broadcast towers!
Find an old set of rabbit ears, hook it up and youll be able to see if you need an attenuator.
I discovered this as well... but kindof in reverse... I couldnt pick up my local fox... lo vhf... so I started playing with my attenuator... when i got to about -4db it started picking up pretty good signal... was very odd.
Oh and for what he said... the grounding it effectively attenuates te signal down... ~3db
Actually, if it has any sort of effect on the signal, it might improve the SNR a bit by diverting transient voltage away from the decoder which in turn may lower the noise floor of the carrier. I've actually tested this with a Macab DigiAir UHF/VHF signal meter and found no drop in -db whether the system is grounded or not.
benj said:
but the system is grounded o the coax... so the system is sending a signal back along another path....effectively splitting it.
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