Are all Milwaukee DTV stations down?

[borghe]

I am not getting signal strength on any stations right now with my Hughes E86. I am using a Rs double bow tie which normally does good. However this morning all of my DirecTV channels were missing, I wasn't getting any signal strength. I unplugged the box and now I am getting all DirecTV channels but no 4, 10, or 58.. Man I hope my receiver isn't bad.....

[RobbQ]

I have been watching HDnet on CBS-58 since about 11:00 AM with no problems.  Using the same double bow tie.  

I hope your box is OK.

[This message has been edited by RobbQ (edited 07-27-2002).]

[borghe]

The box wasn't ok. Luckily Best Buy took it back without any problems. I just hope I don't have further issues as my 30 days from Best Buy are over on Monday.

On an interesting note, the new box had a P4 DirecTV card in it. They had me keep my old one, but I got a glance at the new one. Gray and light blue. Very plain looking.

[MesaV]

A Flanner's salesperson said that there are some compatibility problems with the Hughes E86 box and some brands of televisions.

[borghe]

Hmm.. I haven't had any compatibility issues, except for the box not able to tune in any OTA stations.. After I exchanged it everything was back to working fine. I just looked at my warranty card (never sent in the other one) and the Hughes Platinum receivers all have 2 years parts and labor.. at least I should be covered if anything happens in the future.

[veyj]

Very interesting.  I had the same thing happen to my E86 about a week ago.  Tried everything from warm boot, cold boot, redownload of zipcode database, reaquire channels, clear and rescan...  nothing.  Sat channels are fine. OTA gone.

Hughes tech support wasn't much help.  I recently put up a new antenna and wasn't sure if that was the problem.  I'd love to compare my E86 with another E86 to confirm that it's the box.  Mike S or Borghe, can you help?  Doesn't matter to me if it's my place or yours.

John

[borghe]

No need to compare.. It's the box. I did EVERYTHING to get the locals back and nothing worked. I then checked AVSForum and saw a posting where exactly what we are talking about happens. Just do a search for E86. Bottom line is if you are outside of your exchange policy wherever you bought it, call Hughes and have them send you a new one. There is a 2 year parts and labor warranty on all Hughes Platinum receiver.

I would actually stop by to check except that I am off to Vegas for a couple of weeks at the end of this week and still have stuff to do. Let me know what happens when I get back.

[veyj]

Flanners is exchanging it today.  I hope this one last longer than 30 days.

[borghe]

You and me both.   Like I said though. Worse case scenario is the receiver has 2 years parts and labor. One would hope that means if it dies in a year Hughes will just send us out their current model instead of bothering to spend the money fixing it.

[Paul Bethke]

This sounds grim.

My E86 has "freaked out" a couple times in the past 2 days. By "freak out" I mean that out of the blue it will freeze up for a minute or two, then jump into the "Downloading Program Guide" screen. Once the program guide has been retrieved (5 minutes or so), I lose many of my local channels and have to do a new "Local Scan" to retrieve them. (1-*, 10-2, 10-5)

I'm hoping this would be a bug fixable in the firmware. Does anyone know about firmware upgrades for the E86? Can they be downloaded "in band"? When I first installed my receiver, shortly after activation it did a "software upgrade". Is this a common/frequent occurrance?

Thanks everyone!

Paul

[borghe]

Yes the initial upgrade is common. I believe most units ship with the 5046 firmware and immediately download the 5099 firmware. As for the downloading program guide, it sounds EXACTLY like the box is losing power. If/when my box loses power, the screen will go blue, because that's what color my Mits has on the screen with lack of video input, then the box will come back on and be at downloading guide. Furthermore, when the box loses power, you lose all local scanned channels. I will still keep 4-1, 6-1, 10-, 10-3, 10-4, 36-1, and 58-* because that is what the zipcode database says I should have, but I lose 1-*, 10-2, and 10-5.

It really sounds like you are losing power/resetting. Check the plug. Hopefully it is not the box that's causing it.

[uplinkguy]

Borghe and Paul try this for testing purposes:

Go to the Setup Menu and select Installation.
Then select Dish Setup.  Select No dish under Dish Type.

Rescan your locals.  See if you get any more channels.  Don't forget to check-mark them on the local area page.

I've posted in a couple other areas about the DirecTV advanced programming guide rearranging the local channels for the Madison stations.  The DirecTV info replaces the PSIP data given out by the local stations.

DirecTV might have some bad info on your specific zip codes.  Does anyone else out there in Milwaukee have a E86 box that works?  Try getting their zip code number.

The box updates the guide every so often.  When this happens, any changes you made in the local stations we get reformatted to what DirecTV thinks you have for stations.  For me it would update every half hour at max, sometimes every 5 minutes.  I would have to reselect the physical 20.1 for WHA-DT to continue watching the digital feed.

Another observation:  If your box is in front of you when the screen goes blue, is the annoying green light still on?  If it loses power, it should be obvious unless the box is not in sight.

Yet another observation:  I'm puzzled about the Flanner's salesperson saying there is a compatibility issue with some sets.  Either the monitor has the Y, Pr, Pb component inputs or it doesn't.  Should be obvious to check model numbers.   Is there any sets out there that only has a VGA style, Firewire, or DVI input?  Maybe older monitors have a true R,G,B input setup?  There isn't any two-way info between the two.


Good luck with the toys,
andy

[borghe]

My box was just bad.. I messed with it for a couple of hours including hard reset, rescanning, etc. It went beyond not finding the channels. I didn't get any signal strength on any of them either. Needless to say I got the new box home and all of the channels were right where they should be.

As for Paul, the power thing is just a thought. Unfortunately I am all too familiar with what happens when the box loses power (need to have our duplex rewired at the circuit box), and what he is describing sure sounds like it is losing power. Unless he's like me though with some crazy wiring, it might mean his box or plug is bad.. hopefully not.