Hello all & Merry Christmas, I am in the process of helping my son upgrade his DTV system to SWM capability so he can use whole home DVR. He currently has a single IRD (HR24) 2 cable/BBC to a SL3 (4 port)that works fine and according to my old Acutrac-22 Pro the alignment is dead on (the 101, 99 & 103 sats are all in the 95-99 signal strength range). I recently purchased a SL3 SWM from Amazon (they shipped it in an unprotected bag - but had no apparent external damage) 21V power supply & 8 port SWM splitter.
In the past I have upgraded my personal SL5 system in this manner by simply replacing the LNB with a SL5 SWM/Power Inserter/splitter and it took off and ran once everything in the system went through a power off/on cycle and the HR24 & H24s in my system auto recognized the SWM LNB. No realignment of the dish was necessary.
My problem: I tried to simply replace my son's 4 port SL3 with the SWM SL3, included the power inserter and splitter & removed the BBC from the HR24 connection. The HR24 boots up, recognizes the SL3 SWM and gets as far as "step 2 of 2: Receiving satellite info...." the green bar gets to 98%, then pauses there for several minutes, then I get the "Acquiring guide data. Thanks for your patience" screen, and there it hangs until I select the "more info" button. At this point it sits in the 772 message state (no guide data) - I also noticed that the date & time are wrong. Tried resets, no luck. Switched back to non-SWM config and everything works fine.
If this was a SL5 I would suspect the 119 alignment was off since that is apparently where the guide data transmits; but my understanding with the SL3 SWM is guide data piggybacks from 101 or 103 (I forget which). So theoretically if the non-SWM SL3 has stong signal from all 3 sats, simply swapping the SWM SL3 should not require a realignment (unless it is internally skewed) - correct? Please note that I do not have a SWM capable Sat meter. At this point I suspect the poorly packaged SL3 SWM from Amazon is bad, thoughts? Thanks in advance for your suggestions.
Ps. Since someone will probably ask - I hesitate to have DTV send a tech since my family's last several experiences with them were horrible. (Barely capable English speakers, fly by night subcontractors, trash equipment, didn't know what they are doing - had one guy hand me his AIM meter because he couldn't figure it out; Big difference in lack of professionalism since ATT took over - but those are other threads) And with COVID it is not worth the risk
In the past I have upgraded my personal SL5 system in this manner by simply replacing the LNB with a SL5 SWM/Power Inserter/splitter and it took off and ran once everything in the system went through a power off/on cycle and the HR24 & H24s in my system auto recognized the SWM LNB. No realignment of the dish was necessary.
My problem: I tried to simply replace my son's 4 port SL3 with the SWM SL3, included the power inserter and splitter & removed the BBC from the HR24 connection. The HR24 boots up, recognizes the SL3 SWM and gets as far as "step 2 of 2: Receiving satellite info...." the green bar gets to 98%, then pauses there for several minutes, then I get the "Acquiring guide data. Thanks for your patience" screen, and there it hangs until I select the "more info" button. At this point it sits in the 772 message state (no guide data) - I also noticed that the date & time are wrong. Tried resets, no luck. Switched back to non-SWM config and everything works fine.
If this was a SL5 I would suspect the 119 alignment was off since that is apparently where the guide data transmits; but my understanding with the SL3 SWM is guide data piggybacks from 101 or 103 (I forget which). So theoretically if the non-SWM SL3 has stong signal from all 3 sats, simply swapping the SWM SL3 should not require a realignment (unless it is internally skewed) - correct? Please note that I do not have a SWM capable Sat meter. At this point I suspect the poorly packaged SL3 SWM from Amazon is bad, thoughts? Thanks in advance for your suggestions.
Ps. Since someone will probably ask - I hesitate to have DTV send a tech since my family's last several experiences with them were horrible. (Barely capable English speakers, fly by night subcontractors, trash equipment, didn't know what they are doing - had one guy hand me his AIM meter because he couldn't figure it out; Big difference in lack of professionalism since ATT took over - but those are other threads) And with COVID it is not worth the risk
