[BobNelson]

Lat week the Sony in the bedroom was searching for satellite signal. The one in the living room worked fine. I narrowed it down to the receiver. I replaced it with the spare I had that was in the living room before I got the HD receiver. It worked. I called Direct TV and had them turn on the replacement. Today I go in there and turn the system on and the Sony satellite receiver keeps turning it self on and off. The sound comes on for a few seconds and goes off. Tere is never ant picture. I tried the reset and disconnecting power with no success. How could two of these things go bad in a week? Any suggestions?

 

[mhardyman]

Had much the same problem with our Sonys. One would fail, then I would swap it out to check and it would work fine then slowly degrade as you described. All of these were hooked up with the same configuration: RF cable coming from a four-way Blonde Tongue switch in the basement then running to the rooms to terminate in a Isobar Surge Suppressor, then on to the receiver. I rerouted the rf cable directly to the receivers, bypassing the protection block and lo and behold, it all came back! Found out from a tech that the Sony receivers were particularly susceptible to signal attenuation such as runs longer than 100'. Apparently the surge suppressor also attenuates the signal enough for it to just lose it completely and appear dead.


Cable length and suppressor. Check it out.

 

[BobNelson]

mhardyman:

Thanks for the input. I find it hard to believe that this is the case. They have been running for two and a half years. The last unit's green light keeps going on and off, which makes me think that it is really screwed up.