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Tinkering w/ UTV

post #1 of 4
9/5/11 at 7:39am
Thread Starter 
Picked up a 40Gb UTV off of fleabay for $10 w/free shipping this spring. I knew it would have a bad tuner, but didn't know they'd pack it in plastic mailing envelope. Front face broke, back panel dented enough that the printed circuit board for the power supply was flexed up.

I fed it a new face plate from a dead unit donated by a member here, and pressed the circuit board back in. Darn thing powered up. Fan was noisey, so I swapped that out. Only one tuner passed the self-test and my run of RG-59 to an upstairs bedroom proved to have too much loss to support it, but hey it works.
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post #2 of 4
9/5/11 at 4:19pm
Good to hear people can still find UTVs.

Sounds like a Cable Coupler, some Electrical Tape, a spool of RG-6, and a few RG-6 Cable Ends (after you feed/pull the cable though) gets you the enjoyment of UTV in the Bedroom.

Got some parts/spare UTVs here... should you need more replacement components.
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post #3 of 4
9/7/11 at 3:05am
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the offer. The run of RG-59 is in an upstairs wall, running all of the way to the basement. I can't remember if it has any bends or not.

I may just 4-way split / multiplex the home-run LNB feed before the existing 4-way multiplexer and feed it from an attic drop. My existing 4-way is non-powered, so it might be good to power the new one upstream?

My primary UTV is on my longest run, some 80'+ per cable and rings 92 and 89on signal strength. Would a second grounding block hurt? It would help add some cable play for the splice of my original 2 RG-6 runs from the LNB to the existing multiplexer.
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post #4 of 4
9/7/11 at 11:54am
DirecTV insisted in stopping over and testing my setup before replacing one of my Dead Tuner Sony UTVs. They were kind enough to realize my Cascade of Multi-Switches in the basement hadn't done any favors for the Sony. (Even if when it was working the Reported Signal Strength seemed OK) So they swapped out two non-powered 4 port switches for a single non-powered 8 port. Also confirmed a diplexer I've upstairs is the cause of a low tuner reading. (So I might just use one of the newly freed up 4 ports to see if I can get a better signal reading to the UTV. Or possibly run a fresh cable run.)

The Tech was OK with leaving my Powered 8 port alone (tested as acceptable).

So +1 on the Powered switch here. I'm not certain, but I think many Switches have a screw for a Grounding connection if you decide it's needed. It should be helpful to "boost" the original non-powered 4-way (Particularly on a long run). Could also be nice depending on the model you get... To have the extra feed inputs/outputs.
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