When OTA Loses Signal Dish Shuts Down

[11555h]

On occasion my OTA loses signal and a message comes up that signal was lost and to go to the guide or somewhere else. If you don't do it fast enough the whole thing shuts down and goes thru the steps to restart, generally taking about 5 minutes or longer. Is there anyway to eliminate this from happening or speeding up the restart? Thanks in advance for your ideas.

 

[dishdude]

On occasion my OTA loses signal and a message comes up that signal was lost and to go to the guide or somewhere else. If you don't do it fast enough the whole thing shuts down and goes thru the steps to restart, generally taking about 5 minutes or longer. Is there anyway to eliminate this from happening or speeding up the restart? Thanks in advance for your ideas.

What receiver do you have? There's a known bug in the ViP receivers that causes issues when you have low OTA signal.

 

[11555h]

I have a Hopper 3

 

[DishSubLA]

I have not had either of our H3's shut down due to losing an OTA signal. However, there are funky things ONE of our H3's does (such as frequently becoming UNlinked to its H3 after it is off overnight at least 3 times a month), while the other H3 NEVER loses its Link. There are other buggy things ONE H3 does that the other H3 NEVER does.

Be aware that all these bugs are NOT universal to all H3's. Often it seems only some H3's. I do not know why, but it is what it is.

In your case, the shut down would STOP recording any shows that are recording until the H3 finished rebooting, and the recording with several minutes missing can be frustrating (almost always to my observation, the H3 will record the next airing of that interrupted recording of the show--if it is available like 3 hours later or later in the week, but there is a chance that show may NOT air again soon).

If this troubling behavior becomes too much of a hassle, you can try to force a software download to get the latest and see if that helps, or if you don't want to wait for the next release of an update to the H3, you could request a replacement H3, but be aware you would lose all your recordings unless you transferred them to external HDD before sending it to Dish.

 

[Daniel Hawkins]

I never heard of that happening

 

[dweber]

In the past I have had my Hopper3 reboot when watching an OTA weak signal. It doesn’t do it every time. That is probably why Dish does not want to add stations that have a weak signal into the Guide when doing a scan for stations.

 

[11555h]

Sometimes when recording OTA and the signal gets week I have not noticed it rebooting, however, I do get a message that parts of the program may not record due to loss of signal.

 

[thomasjk]

In the past I have had my Hopper3 reboot when watching an OTA weak signal. It doesn’t do it every time. That is probably why Dish does not want to add stations that have a weak signal into the Guide when doing a scan for stations.

As have I.

 

[dishdude]

I've run into this on my Wally too. Even playing back a recorded event that the signal was low will cause it to crash and reboot. Peaking the antenna to improve signal is the only remedy.

 

[Sat guys]

On that

On occasion my OTA loses signal and a message comes up that signal was lost and to go to the guide or somewhere else. If you don't do it fast enough the whole thing shuts down and goes thru the steps to restart, generally taking about 5 minutes or longer. Is there anyway to eliminate this from happening or speeding up the restart? Thanks in advance for your ideas.

On that outdoor TV antenna put a channel master cm-7777 mats mount amp it will fixs the problem or you should probably take the antenna and and put it UP higher life 15ft as well it will fix your problem good luck

 

[MW390]

I've run into this on my Wally too. Even playing back a recorded event that the signal was low will cause it to crash and reboot. Peaking the antenna to improve signal is the only remedy.

I only have Hopper 3 (2nd one; 1st one replaced). We were watching channel 7.1 NYC WABC recording of GMA which starts at 7am at 10am. 15 minutes in we get pixelation then loss of signal then Hopper reboots. Dish can't fix problem. I asked them but it seems when they designed the code
then didn't leave room for event/diagnostic log errors. BTW I have a nice UHF/VHF antenna on the 2nd floor of my house pointed toward Empire State Bldg/ 1 WTC. Been working for years. Have Channel Master pre-amp and CM signal splitter. 4 TVs in house all work perfectly while on antenna.
I just think their ATSC tuners are probably crap

 

[dishdude]

I just think their ATSC tuners are probably crap

They certainly aren't anything great...every TV I have owned has had a more sensitive tuner than the dish OTA tuner connected to it.

 

[Zbrannigan]

I had this same issue until a October?? Update. Now, instead of rebooting during weak signal / cochannel interference, it just makes all the OTA channels say “no signal” until you reboot the receiver. This is actually worse than rebooting because it can miss recordings on OTA.