Hi all -

Some helpful folks here so I figured I'd run this by you as I am beyond frustrated with my 8 days of experience with DTV and my SWM install.

I had DISH Network for a couple years and felt it was time to switch.

The DTV tech came on Tuesday, July 13, and installed a new dish, an HR24 in the living room, an H24 in the master bedroom, and a basic SD received in a room in the basement. A pretty simple setup.

The power inserter is in the basement bedroom with the SD box. It's a guest room that is rarely used.

All was great for a few days. I like the DTV DVR a LOT better than the DISH network's. I like the channel lineup and the price.

On Sunday, we came home from a day-trip in the evening and flipped on the TV and we had a 771 error on the HR24. Odd. I hit the red reset button and it rebooted and got hung up on the "Searching for Satellite Signal..." (SFSS) screen. I then went to check the other TVs in the house and saw the same thing. Lovely.

I called tech support who had me go downstairs, unplug the device I now know is the Power Inserter (PI), and do another reset on the HR24. This brought everything back to life so I figured it was a fluke. The downside: my wife missed Big Brother... Don't judge us!

Monday morning, everything was still working when I left for work. Monday sometime in the late morning, my wife called me at work and said she was staring at SFSS again and, of course, the kids wanted to watch Nick Jr since by this time it was 100 degrees outdoors. I had her unplug the PI but this time it didn't help. I got home from work around 4:00 and tried it myself and it didn't help. Knowing how important it is to my marriage that my wife gets to see The Bachelorette on Monday nights, I quickly connected up our HD antenna so she could watch it live (the horror!) while I went downstairs again to tinker with the PI. I unplugged and replugged every connection in the house. Nothing.

I called DTV. They tried to walk me through the troubleshooting again but I told them I'd already done all that several times. They said they'd send a tech out between 12 and 4. Swell. I get to take another half-day off work.

Around 8pm, I tried one last time to reset the boxes and they all worked. We had a signal again. How strange. I briefly considered canceling the service call but I had a hunch this wasn't over...

All is still working on Tuesday morning and I again consider canceling the appointment so I don't have to leave work, but I didn't. And, of course, my wife calls me again at 11:30am to tell me the satellite is SFSS once again.

So I take off work after lunch and sit around at home and, naturally, the tech calls me AT 4PM to tell me he's "on the way." Great. I could've stayed at work and not had to take the time off.

He's a nice guy -- the same one who did the install the week before -- and he sees the SFSS message on the screen. He futzes with the remote to get to a screen where he can take some signal strength readings and all is well with that. He goes downstairs and messes with the PI but that doesn't help.

The tech then spends the next hour snipping and re-crimping every single barrel connector on the PI and at the splitter, REPLACES the PI and splitter, and then everything is working. He is puzzled, but figures his blanket approach has solved the problem.

All was still working this morning, so I had the tiniest glimmer of hope that this would work. As luck would have it, however, by 11am SFSS was back. I called DTV from work and got a rather snippy rep who tried to walk me through the troubleshooting again. I told her the whole saga and said that if this wasn't straightened out ASAP, the next visit from a tech would be to pick up my equipment and reinstall my DISH dish.

She told me someone would be here between 8 and 12 tomorrow morning. I told her that would not work for me since I'd already spent a half day waiting for the installer and another half day for the first attempted repair that didn't work. I told her I wanted someone at my house at 4pm Thursday.

She said "it doesn't work like that." I told her that it needed to work like that or she could make arrangements to have the boxes and dish picked up. Eventually she agreed to email the local office and have them call me to make the arrangements. The guy from the local office was VERY nice and VERY accommodating. He will be here tomorrow (Thursday) at 4pm.

Of course, as a confirmed tinkerer, I had to try solving this myself. After work, I tried moving the PI to other locations (of course remembering to move the appropriate cable to the power passthrough on the splitter!) and I still got SFSS.

I figured, well - it'll come back on by 8pm because that's what's happened every day for the last 4 days. Sure enough, as I'm typing this story out, the living room HR24 acquires a signal and comes back to life as if nothing happened.

This is the weirdest thing I've ever seen. We had ZERO reception issues with DISH for two years. If whatever they try tomorrow doesn't work, I'm ready to go back to (gasp!) Comcast to get the guaranteed $120 for two years on the Triple Play since we use them for phone and internet anyway.

Has it gotten so bad that Comcast is my best option?!? Yes. It has.

If you've read all of this, do you have any idea what could cause this kind of regular black out of my entire system? The only thing the tech didn't replace on Tuesday was the line from the DISH to the splitter (which was installed 5 years ago when we built the house) and the LNB itself.

Thanks for listening. As you can tell, I have no TV so I'm trying to pass the time by writing...