Hi,

I recently connected a upper band VHF antenna (ya1713) to my Dish receiver antenna input. It worked great for the past 3 weeks, but now if I select this channel (KFFX, 8) the yellow loss of signal warning flashes a few times and then the receiver freezes up and has to be reset. When I go into the Dish menu and check the signal strength, it gives me a green bar lock of 65. This is the same level of signal that worked fine before. My UHF OTA channels work fine. I tried replacing the Dish receiver with my other one and it did the same thing. One other thing it did is when selecting this channel the yellow warning loss of signal came on but the programming was visible in the background, however the receiver would not respond to any commands and had to be reset.
Has anyone had this problem? Thanks.

Jon Giard

I've not had this particular problem/issue. But, I wonder if there isn't significant noise on the problem channel? I have an APEX dt502 converter box and this displays both signal strength and signal quality values for my OTA channels. My antenna is connected to a tv and a Hauppauge HVR 1600. I have problems with recording with HVR-1600 when signal quality is less than 100%, no matter what the signal strength. IME, the APEX paid for itself by ensuring proper antenna location and signal quality. I wasn't satisfied with antenna location until all channels read 100% in SQ. Might be worth a look for your problem channel as well...

HTH,

Rick

Rick,

So you just use the Apex dt502 to check signal quality, but don't convert it? My tv is digital only without an ATSC tuner built in. I have considered buying a separate ATSC tuner that might work better than the one in the Dish 811 receiver. What you're saying is maybe my antenna location/orientation is not optimized.
My neighbor has a ham radio antenna but it seems unlikely it would be constantly causing a problem. I really don't know if it could cause interference with VHF reception.

Jon

Hi Jon,

Presently, our antenna is only connected to a hdtv (built in tuner) and my computer video card. Once the system is finalized this spring, I will be using the Apex502 converter box on our HD ready CRT. The apex has s-video output and it looks very good on the sony CRT and some other smaller tvs. You are correct, at the moment I am only using the Apex for testing purposes.

Yes, also interpreted my earlier comments correctly. It is possible that the problem channel has a high error rate with current antenna orientation. IME, some newer tv tuners can handle this error rate better than others... My LG hdtv and the apex had no problems with the high error rate channel but the Hauppauge HVR sure did...

Ham radios can cause vhf interference... An excellent discussion can be found at: http://www.kyes.com/antenna/interference/tvibook.html

HTH,

Rick

Rick,

Thanks again for some helpful suggestions and the link. I will try reorienting my antenna a bit and then see if that works. Right now I'm on the recommended compass heading, but it worked earlier when I was about 10 degrees off the heading.

Jon

Sometimes you can fix problems by moving the antenna up or down as well. A few inches can do wonders sometimes... :)

Best,

Rick