HDTV Forum

I have been having a problem with the DirecTV HD signal that began as intermittent pixelation on my year old Sony Bravia after moving to AZ from CA. Actually, the problem began in CA but I thought that the signal line of sight might have been hampered by some trees.

The pixelation would last for a few seconds to several minutes and finally I would lose the signal entirely and get the

I also live in California and have that problem too, probably a couple of times a year. I suspect it may be caused by software updates. Typically a reset should restore eveything but it sounds to me like you may have a flaky DVR, especially since eveything else has been replaced by process of elimination. As far as the out of sync audio/video, I can usually fix that by turning the box off then on - use the remote. I haven't had sync problems for quite a while.

Next time it happens, try doing a RBR (red button reset) on the DVR. If that fixes it for another 3 or 4 days then you know the problem is in the DVR. If that doesn't fix it then I suspect the Dish may be moving. What is it mounted to?

The dish is mounted to the side of the house with two additional support arms bolted in to the eaves. We've checked the stability of the mounting and don't feel it's the problem.

Jim

If the dish itself is stable, not covered with snow and the you have fair weather I would suspect a flaky DVR. I have had to replace many of them. I just replaced an H20-100 that caught fire. High internal temperatures can cause instability as well. have you checked that. In the set up menu, it will tell you what the internal temperature is. Remember that the DVR is recording all the time whether or not the power power lights are on. I had to install a cooling system in the A/V rack, and it was designed for convection cooling, which was not adequate. I was seeing internal temperatures of 120 degrees before I installed the cooling system. You also do not want to set the DVR on top of your A/V amplifier and leave plenty of breathing room.

I see this message too occasionally on an HR21-700. I'm assuming SAT2 means second sat tuner. I have never seen this message for SAT1.

I was able to get a signal on channels that give the SAT2 error message by forcing the receiver to switch to SAT1 for that channel. This works if SAT1 isn't already recording something, or if you don't care about that recording.

When you get the message, go one channel up or down and start a recording. This should lock SAT2 to that channel. Then go back to the channel that gave you the error, and the receiver should now use SAT1 to receive it. This always results in a good signal on SAT1 for that channel when SAT2 failed.

I haven't tried swapping the two cables on the back, but I doubt that's the problem, because I moved the receiver from one room to another, with completely different cable runs, and it's still doing the exact same thing. Next time it happens I'll check the receiver temperature.