Shemya Island Alaska here anyone know why we can't get programming? Signal is good Please help!

shemya

SatelliteGuys Family
Original poster
Nov 30, 2012
49
0
Alaska
I am a Tech on Shemya Island Alaska, we currently have a working 30 reciever Dishnetwork headend, we use a 7 meter dish and can only see the 129 bird. We had to have our recievers hooked up in Anchorage to get a download from the 110 satellite we cannot see and then have them shipped here and then we did a check switch and deleted the 110 sat feed that we do not get and the 40 or so channels we get on 129 came up fine. The problem now is we recently ordered 10 more recievers went through the same procedures that we did with the original 30, check switch is fine, signal is good, program guide downloads fine but after that when we go to the guide and try to pick one of the channels we are authorized for we get a total signal loss message. we are using ViP211K recievers and a DP34 switch. We have tried the new recievers without the switch and tried one at a time through the existing vacant port of the working switch with no solutions. The recievers don't say "not authorized" they say complete signal loss but when we check signal on the transponders we get here the signal is fine We have asked for multiple hits and technical advice from Dishnetwork but they have no clue. We have been trying to get these 10 new recievers working for over a week now. Any Ideas would be appreciated.
Thank You
 
With 30 receivers already, I assume you have quite a few DP34 switches cascaded. IIRC you can only cascade 3 of these switches before the signal is too feeble to make it into and out of the 4th switch. But do I see that you already bypassed all switches and still get no signal on the new receivers?

How about this idea? Remove one of the 20 already working, and put a new one in it's place. This will tell us for sure whether it's the new receiver or your gnarly hookup.

Here's another idea. With only one satellite in view, you don't really need a switch at all. Just buy an amp (if such exists) and fan the signal out to all 40 (gaak) receivers.
 
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Thanks for the reply, Yes I have tried an existing port from the current setup and it goes through the check switch fine but after it downloads the guide still comes up with total signal loss, I go back and check the transponder channels and they all show good signal and the 129 sat is recognized. We have a 1- DP 34 switch feeding 4- 8 ways on the existing 30 reciever setup and I took one reciever off and plugged one of the new one's in that port. I took down the whole system and plugged directly into the LNB (bypassing the switch) and still the same thing. I'm thinking that maybe the new recievers did not get their firmware updates from the sat 110 when they were setup in Anchorage and will have to get them sent back. I had set up the new recievers to cascade one DP34 off of the original Dp34 to another 8 way and was getting good signal. I'm pretty much out of ideas here. Thanks again for the reply.
 
Sounds like you covered all the bases, other than the receivers themselves. What version of the software do you show?
 
Yes, I verified with Dishnetwork that they are all the current firmware and match the existing working recievers. The latest is after being on the phone with Customer service for close to 3 hours they did something to our existing account of 30 recievers and 9 of them are now showing only half of the guide channels and loss of signal. We have 3 accounts now the first 15, the second 15 which was working fine and then a 3rd account for the new 10 recievers we can't get to come up. So with them messing with our accounts looks like they knocked the first on off now and nomatter what we say they tell us that it could'nt of been anything they have done. All they do now is read a troubleshooting tree and end up at all our recievers our bad, when we ask to talk to the Technical Dept to move this up the chain they say they are the only ones to talk to! I know thats not true cause the first 30 recievers we got working last year had some problems and Dish support gave me a number to a Tech Support number...Does anyone know it? I cannot find it. We are worried that if they keep messing with our accounts they will keep knocking our channels out till we have none! Anybody else have any Ideas before I have to pack up all these recievers and send them back? Thanks.....
 
Good grief! Sorry to hear that. I suggest contacting a member of the Dish IRT. They are Dish CSRs and the best of the best. Maybe they can figure out what happened to mess up your accounts.
 
Good grief! Sorry to hear that. I suggest contacting a member of the Dish IRT. They are Dish CSRs and the best of the best. Maybe they can figure out what happened to mess up your accounts.

Unfortunately if you account isn't a residential account DIRT has limited or no ability to help you. I speak from experience as when they set up my account in a planned development community I was set up as a MDU/Commercial account and DIRT can't help other than pass on problems with guide listings and other very limited non billing or technical issues.