Took the Plunge Back to the Dark Side

[silversurfer]

Well folks today I had a 625 installed. I used to have E* back in the late 90s but have been a D* fan for many years now. I currently have both. I am going to do a trial run and see how it goes. D* still does not offer locals in Abilene which was the biggest reason I had E* installed. I am having one strange issue. I can not receive my locals. E* does offer Abilene locals and I had the 148 dish installed and my signal strength is fine but after 45 minutes with E* tech support they can't get them to show up in my guide. They have already sent a new receiver out but I was curious if anyone else has experienced this problem. We did all the usual things, check switch, hard and soft resets, reauthorization all to no avail. Any ideas?

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Sometimes it takes up to 24 hours for locals and RSN's to appear in your guide. I have seen this happen quite a few times.

 

[dfergie]

Welcome back to E*... I keep both providers just in case. If you have a dpp switch try unhooking power on the power inserter (after powering down Receiver) and unhooking coax to it...Then hook it all back up and do a switch check.

 

[JamesJ]

Sometimes it takes up to 24 hours for locals and RSN's to appear in your guide. I have seen this happen quite a few times.

I would bet this is the case as it took awhile for mine to show!


Welcome back, nice to see you on here silversurfer! I have had E* for a while now and love it, I have decided to keep it as i have bounced back and forth deciding what was best for me, I recently (2 days ago) upgraded to the new HD Reciever and cant wait to get that so I can post a full review on here! keep us informed of how you like it so far!

 

[BrettTRay]

Scott is on the mark with his post. E* receivers sometimes takes 24 hours to get the locals in the guide. Lots of times they are there but only in the 8 and 9 thousand numbers until they get to their regular channel number like 2-69. I've seen the HD channels take 24hours to get in the guide also but very rarely happens.

 

[HCI]

May also try power cycling the receiver. Before you do put it on the test channel of 148, not sure what it is but on the 105 superdishes it seems to work most of the time.

 

[KE4EST]

Like tate said do a power cycle and your locals may appear. Your installer should have informed you about the fact that the locals can take sometime to appear. Unless you did it yourself, then you would not know. That would have saved a call and a box that you don't need now coming to you.

Only other thing I can think of is, the installer did not properly aim or set up the 148 dish.

 

[SimpleSimon]

Yeah - do a Check Switch and confirm your birds.

And yes, it can take 24 hours or more for the lcoals to re-map and also appear in the guide.

Look for the channels in their "real" locations up in the thousands. If you don't know the numbers, go here: http://www.dishchannelchart.com

 

[Van]

Funny, I have never seen the locals take longer than 10 mins to come in though I have heard about this 24 hour issue.

 

[silversurfer]

Thanks for all the info guys! I woke up this morning and checked the locals and they still aren't there but I think I found the problem. When I check sat 148 in the dish pointer screen it coes up and says wrong sat - echostar 119 west. I assume that means the installer pointed it at the wrong bird?

 

[RandallA]

Do a check switch as suggested above and hopefully he did aim it at 148. If after the check switch you get the "wrong sat" again then he f****d up and you need to call E* and tell them.

 

[RBBrittain]

That 148 dish should be aimed a LOT further to the west than the main one--in fact, slightly more west than south (236 to 238 azimuth depending on the program). If both E* dishes are pointed in almost the same direction (and it's still off after the check switch as RandallA suggested), that's your problem; the installer aimed both of them at 110/119.

 

[silversurfer]

That's definitley my problem...They both look like they are aimed in exactly the same direction.....guess I'll have to do it myself..Thanks again for the help guys...

 

[RandallA]

"They both look like they are aimed in exactly the same direction"

So the installer screwed up. It shouldn't be that hard to do it yourself but I would call E* and let them know what happened. They should send back someone to do it right.

 

[silversurfer]

They are sending someone back...I was going to do it myself, I have done it many times in the past but, I don't think it will work at all in its current location. When I set the proper azimuth it appears to be looking at the roof. I know the look angle is much higher than what it appears but I'm not sure it will work. It is going to have to be moved anyway or at least swapped with the 110/119 dish because when I point the 148 dish in the right direction it is pointing at the 110/119 LNB arm. Sure I could fix all this but I'm not in a big hurry I have the core programming and still have my D* HR10-250 pulling in the OTA locals. Hopefully the installer will be back out tomorrow.

So far I am very impressed with the 625. It has performed flawlessly up to this point and I like the interactive features. You can't put a bigger hdd in these units can you? That may be the one thing that keeps me from dropping D*. We record a lot since my wife works nights we usally have a ton of stuff on there. This is a problem especially with HD. I just added a 300 gig drive to my D* receiver to keep up.

 

[SimpleSimon]

Unfriggin' believable.

It's inexcusable for an installer to leave without checking the signals - AND ensuring that you are auth'd for the locals (ie. you can receive them using the 'thousands' numbers).

Van - I haven't seen the 24-hour delay in local remap/guide for quite a while - maybe it only applies to certain receiver models. I just can't remember.