tv shouldn't be this difficult....

[jct21]

dish started out great. very impressed with rain fade endurance. impressed with channel offerings, which was one of the main reasons I switched to dish. for the first few months it worked without incident. other than a few minor things like getting used to the user interface and quirky dvr functionality it was good. for the last few weeks I've spent many many hours on the phone and facebook messenger with tech support trying to fix my setup problems. I had a tech visit today who seen the messages and encountered the same issues I was having. he said those problems don't seem to be common among most dish users. he just didn't know what was causing it. he plugged up something to the front of the hopper and said there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the hopper but he didn't have any replacements on the truck anyway. I would have to call dish to have one sent out. dish refuses saying there is nothing wrong when they access it remotely. I've sent several pictures to tech support and re-created the problems with them on the phone, yet no one seems to know what to do or how to fix it, or just unwilling to fix it.

I really hate this, I had planned on staying with dish for years, especially given directv's iffy situation. I would still recommend dish because I'm sure my issues are a rare thing. my sister & parents have dish for 15yrs or more with no problems. but I was able to get in touch with directv win-back department and take them up on their offer. I get installed with directv again tomorrow morning. their generous discounts for 2years and prepaid gift cards end up paying me back the ETF and more over time. tv shouldn't be this difficult.

*edit* I mentioned the possibility of a wiring problem to the technician while he was here. he stated the wiring is good, if it wasn't good no signal at all would get through. .sigh.

 

[TV Junkie]

The trade off for the good ol days of rabbit ears and 3 channels. 5 channels if you knew how to use the UHF knob.

Hey Conan the Librarian is on tonight

 

[Juan]

Might be nice if you described the actual issue

 

[jct21]

i remember the days of getting up to change the channel. all 5 of them lol. when i was a kid we lived in a very rural area of kentucky. no cable service at all. me and dad would put an antenna on top of the mountain behind our house and run wire, several hundred spliced together feet of it, up to the antenna. worked pretty good but we had to climb it each time we had a strong storm. i was a teenager before we got cable service. it was up to channel 17. man we thought that was really something

 

[TV Junkie]

I was the remote control for my older brother

We found an old, beat, bent aerial in a dumpster and attached it to our TV. WOW! We still had the same channel count but now we could read most of the words when displayed on the screen. Our mom HATED how it looked so we had to put it back where we found it

 

[jct21]

Might be nice if you described the actual issue

my apologies. I've explained this so much to dish I failed to provide the problems.

dvr reboots every time on demand is accessed. it reboots at random while watching live tv. the joey's freeze up when exiting apps like prime. I'm unable to regain live tv after accessing any app on any device without unplugging the unit. 1 joey in particular constantly has the 0 of 0 tuners screen which requires reboot to regain live tv. sometimes even the reboot don't work, must do it again. channel swap no longer works on the hopper when pressing input. i get random error screens, which ill attach pictures of when I'm done here if it will let me. one of my joeys will display the tv options menu that lists the shows on each tuner, pressing select does nothing. its a frozen screen which requires unplugging. each time an error occurs its not responsive to remote commands. this is everyday, several times per day. I don't see how i can have these issues and not have anything show up when they access the hopper and look for info. the joeys will look for the hopper even though the hopper has programming. always takes a reboot to get back to tv, and that's short lived till it all starts its rinse and repeat cycle again.

the tech today seen the problem for himself but didn't have a clue what was causing it.

 

[Juan]

Is your house wiring grounded?

 

[olds403]

Generally the apps suck on the hopper. I can't use Netflix as it freezes when you try to exit requiring a power plug reboot. So I just don't use them and don't allow anyone else to use them either, just makes life easier, I use Roku for apps.

I had similar issues with one wireless joey, are yours wireless? I finally told them it needed to be resolved or I was going to dump them at wife's request. They sent a great tech (on a Sunday) that crawled through my attic to run a coax to my master bedroom so they could change out the WJ for a Joey 3. I still see a very occasional 0 of 0 tuners error or Broadband Connection lost error but they don't happen very often and usually don't require a reboot. I hope Direct TV works for you in the end.

 

[jct21]

Is your house wiring grounded?

yes

 

[jct21]

Generally the apps suck on the hopper. I can't use Netflix as it freezes when you try to exit requiring a power plug reboot. So I just don't use them and don't allow anyone else to use them either, just makes life easier, I use Roku for apps.

I had similar issues with one wireless joey, are yours wireless? I finally told them it needed to be resolved or I was going to dump them at wife's request. They sent a great tech (on a Sunday) that crawled through my attic to run a coax to my master bedroom so they could change out the WJ for a Joey 3. I still see a very occasional 0 of 0 tuners error or Broadband Connection lost error but they don't happen very often and usually don't require a reboot. I hope Direct TV works for you in the end.

my setup is all wired. I wanted him to check and run new wires if needed but the technician today wouldn't get under my floor, which is easy access and dry, to check the wiring. he did check the lnb and plugged the thing into the hopper and said he found no issues. after all that he and his supervisors tried their best to sell me a sound bar, security system and a firestick.

I had directv for 20yrs before this dish. I'm hoping it still works as it did before. the sales folk I spoke with assured me all the same features were still there. I had very few issues with them during that time. nothing like what I'm experiencing with dish.

 

[Juan]

yes

Sometimes power will surge and find the shortest path to ground

 

[primestar31]

yes

Have you actually checked AT the ground stake by your circuit breaker box? You might have to dig a little bit to check. Our last house, the ground clamp disconnected from the ground rod. Luckily I discovered it, and reconnected it after wire-brushing the rod and clamp real well. As for just checking it with a outlet ground checker, it can still sometimes pass even IF this scenario has also happened to you.

IF this happened to me, and the ground rod check was 100%, I'd start eliminating things manually. Remove every outboard device from the actual receiver, etc. JUST run ONLY the receiver from the wiring coming in from the dish. IF it still acted up, I'd be tempted to run my own brand new rg-6 cable to the switch, etc, right up the line. One thing at a time.

You might want to also check to make sure that the coax grounding block the tech used outside, is actually ALSO grounded to the electrical panels ground rod via a direct connection. For all you know, it isn't grounded at all, or he grounded it to a plastic water pipe or something. Or drove his own ground rod and didn't bond it to the house ground, and now you have a ground-loop.

 

[TheKrell]

jct21 those problems are really jaw-dropping. Something is definitely amiss and techs giving up on you without trying to fix anything is unacceptable IMHO.

I think Primestar is onto something. Just because everything is wired, and even if your house is properly grounded, that does not mean every outlet is wired correctly. If I were you, I'd get one of those testers and check every outlet. At my current house, I found a crappy connection on one wall outlet that partly melted itself before we found it and replaced the receptacle. At my last house, I found a whole string of outlets that were wired backwards. At college, I found 90V on a metal switch plate.

 

[sktrus]

If your Directv installer doesn’t mind, have him use brand new cables and do everything from scratch. You have every right to dump Dish and go somewhere else. As long as your house gets good satellite reception, they should be able to find out what is wrong and do the necessary changes. The problem is you never know the skill and experience level of installers.

 

[HipKat]

If your Directv installer doesn’t mind, have him use brand new cables and do everything from scratch. You have every right to dump Dish and go somewhere else. As long as your house gets good satellite reception, they should be able to find out what is wrong and do the necessary changes. The problem is you never know the skill and experience level of installers.

You mean Dish Network?
Anyway, yes, he needs to be completely re-cabled, like I posted the other day. I already had a very higher up at Dish in the Engineering Dept connect to his hopper and agrees it is 100% in the cabling!
These are the results of the tests he ran. The tech who came out today is useless. This is aggravating.
jct21 I'm sorry you're going through this. I wish you lived in one of my company's regions

the tech today seen the problem for himself but didn't have a clue what was causing it.

Your tech is an idiot or lazy or both

 

[Bobby]

You mean Dish Network?
Anyway, yes, he needs to be completely re-cabled, like I posted the other day. I already had a very higher up at Dish in the Engineering Dept connect to his hopper and agrees it is 100% in the cabling!
These are the results of the tests he ran. The tech who came out today is useless. This is aggravating.
jct21 I'm sorry you're going through this. I wish you lived in one of my company's regions



Your tech is an idiot or lazy or both

Keep in mind Kat, that he already had the DISH tech out and he wouldn't go under the house to replace wiring. So, he has already called DirecTV and they are coming out tomorrow to install their equipment. The suggestion was for the DirecTV tech to replace the wiring that DISH wouldn't.

 

[jct21]

I will simply refuse the install if directv is not willing to run new wires. I'm just so frustrated with the whole experience. dish called me around 430 this afternoon for a follow up regarding the tech visit. I explained in detail everything that is happening. they assured me it was indeed a software problem during the latest 301 release. informed me it was a very isolated issue only affecting a small amount of customers. I explained that I suspect its a wiring problem and how I had requested the tech check my wiring connections & he refused. the agent said they will report this to their installation department for a review of the technicians performance.

I haven't canceled dish yet. I'm waiting to see if directv installation is gonna be a fiasco or run smoothly before i deal with dish again today. I'm just so aggravated with the whole thing I'm willing to eat the ETF with or without special pricing & gift cards from another provider.

sad thing is here in my area its dish, directv or our horrid cable company who charge extortion prices and don't even carry a single movie channel in HD but they sure charge for HD prices for them. I'm not a fan of streaming but I have come to the realization that streaming is the future, and I hate that. sheewww.

ill post back here tomorrow and letcha know how how it goes....

THANK YOU to everyone who assisted me and offered advice, it truly is appreciated!!!

 

[HipKat]

Keep in mind Kat, that he already had the DISH tech out and he wouldn't go under the house to replace wiring. So, he has already called DirecTV and they are coming out tomorrow to install their equipment. The suggestion was for the DirecTV tech to replace the wiring that DISH wouldn't.

Ahhh, I didn't read that far ahead. Too bad because DirecTV is absolute SHYTE these days. Excessive billing, outdated, substandard equipment, and God only know what their management is doing. I give them 2-3 years before they're done.

 

[pattykay]

I will simply refuse the install if directv is not willing to run new wires.

I haven't canceled dish yet.

You are good to go. Just explain to the DirecTV technician that you are still using your Dish service, and they will have no choice but to run new wires for their equipment. You don't have to tell them that you are planning to cancel Dish.

Not that I am recommending that you mess with the wiring, but here is what I would do as an experiment in this situation. I would let DirecTV install all new wiring first. Then, I would unhook that wiring from their equipment, and use the new wiring to hook up the Dish equipment, just to see if the new wiring actually fixes your issues. (It helps if the DirecTV dish is located fairly close to where your Dish dish is.) I would make sure to keep track of which wires go where, so I could later hook the Directv system back up exactly the way it was before. If the issues remain, then at least you would know for sure that the wiring was not the issue, before you cancel your Dish service. If the new wiring does indeed fix the Dish issues, then you would have a decision to make about which service you want to cancel.

 

[HipKat]

You are good to go. Just explain to the DirecTV technician that you are still using your Dish service, and they will have no choice but to run new wires for their equipment. You don't have to tell them that you are planning to cancel Dish.

Not that I am recommending that you mess with the wiring, but here is what I would do as an experiment in this situation. I would let DirecTV install all new wiring first. Then, I would unhook that wiring from their equipment, and use the new wiring to hook up the Dish equipment, just to see if the new wiring actually fixes your issues. (It helps if the DirecTV dish is located fairly close to where your Dish dish is.) I would make sure to keep track of which wires go where, so I could later hook the Directv system back up exactly the way it was before. If the issues remain, then at least you would know for sure that the wiring was not the issue, before you cancel your Dish service. If the new wiring does indeed fix the Dish issues, then you would have a decision to make about which service you want to cancel.

The problem with that is the SWM Splitter DTV uses vs the Solo Hub for Dish. Plus, he'd have to do this before activating the receivers for DTV and signing the work order