How long are your runs from dish to SWM and from SWM to each of your receivers?

Lenght of runs

Its about 25 feet from the dish to the swm

From the swm to the receivers are from 20 to 30 feet.

Frustrated

Ok, I am about ready to rip the entire house apart. I added an additional 20 feet of coax between the power supply and swm. I made sure i capped the 1x 8 splitter that were not being used. So, Once again today, I was able to get all the receivers up and running.

Now the wife comes home and goes to one of the rooms and of course all the lower hd channels are not working again. I have been trying to get them back but with no luck.

So, i really need your help. Something I have done or something i am doing is not right.

I'm wondering if maybe you have a dish alignment issue. If you're only losing certain channels, then maybe one of your LNBs isn't seeing its satellite properly, or, it could be a bad LNB. It also could be a bad coax cable running from that one port on the SWM to the dish.

I think you are right

I have alligned the dish several times and no luck. i will be making another attempt again. I didn't give the thought about a bad LNB, because it is a new dish.

but just as before, I got up this morning and started the tvs and sure enough at this moment they are all working perfectly.

So, it just may be the alignment that is off. The question is which one, yaw, tilt, azmith, etc. I will give it another shot if it warms up today.

I do have a meter and have been able to get most of the signals in the 90s.

Realigned

Ok, I just finished with my meter and religned the dish. I am in the mid 90s to 100s on the 110, 101, 109.

However when changing over on my meter to the hd bands, i can only get into the 60s. Is this normal? or do i need a new lnb. I adjusted tilt, yaw and azmith.
I peeked it out as best as i could.

Also, do you have a list of satelitte numbers and best meter readings possible.

I use the accutrak 22 pro meter.

thanks

We don't really have a list of "best" numbers, but we've routinely seen all dish numbers in the 90s.

Thoughts

Ok, I just spent the last 6 hours troubleshooting, tell me what you think.

1st, went to all three receivers and disconnected them, 2 are HD DVR 1 is a HD R only

2nd. Fired one HD DVR only, checked all the signals and transsponders. Monitored the swm transponders. All at 100 or upper 90s

3rd. Fired up the 2nd HD DVR and checked all the signals and transponders and Monitored the swm transponders. All at 100 or upper 90s

So far so good.

4th, fired up the one HD R only and watched the transponders on the two dvrs. Sure enough the HD DVR lost some transponders.

5th. Disconnected the HD R and saw my transponders come back. Now after sometime of doing this, I noticed if the HDR was left on for any length of time, I had to reset and restart the process over.

Went back to the HD R and went through the list of transponders and noticed it did not configure for the swm.

I called direct tv and they said to do a software update. I updated the software and started over again. But the unit still did not reconigize the SWM.

6th. After disconnecting the HDR completely and just leaving the two HD DVRs connected I noticed that if i shut one off the other would lose a transponder. If i turned the other one back on the transponder would come back.

Is this normal?

7th. I reset from start again and then connected the HD R to the swm 2 position on the swm. Just to see what would happen. Once again I lost transponders on the HD DVR units.

So, My thought is my HD R is causing a conflict in the SWM and Maybe my 1x8 splitter may be bad?

Any thoughts?

I really think you likely have a weird wiring problem. Try moving units around a bit and see if the problems occur when only certain lines are in use.

Is it all RG-6 cabling? Are any runs particularly long?

update

No, the runs are not long. the HD R is the shortest of the group.

As for moving the boxes around, I haven't tried that yet. Direct Tv is sending a replacement unit. If i get the time tomorrow I will move one of the others to the location of the HD R.

All the cables are the same RG-6 came off the same spool when we had the addition built and all are only a year old.

As for the HD R, Shouldn't it have read the swm and then the software should have shown the transponders for the swm?

When you have an HD DVR to a SWM, you will see the SWM as you cycle through the satellites in setup.

Info

Yes, that is true, in my previous long winded note, i stated, both my HD DVRs have the SWM Transponders.

I am not getting the same response with my HD Receiver only. It does not show or reconize the SWM. Even After I did the software update.

What model is it?

model

it is the h21-100