Interesting problem with DPP & dual tuners(bug reports)

[SystemDude]

I have been using my 360 Elite for a couple of weeks now, and overall I love the daylights out of it. But if you have been following my posts, you know I have been sending up flares about a few seemingly unexplainable behaviors that have been driving me a little crazy. Well, I have been spending a LOT of time conducting experiments, and have discovered the root cause of just about all of the weirdness I have seen. Now I am going to solicit the help of others here, to see if this is a really serious issue with my equipment, or if I have just got something set up wrong and need to return to the basement, red-faced.

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First of all, my rooftop setup is dead simple and the same as lots of others -- one DPPlus on a 500 dish picking up 119/110, and a second DPro Dual on a separate dish for 91, feeding the 'LNB In' on the DPPlus. At the moment, I have both DPP outputs run into my Elite, and the picture quality is fantastic. I eventually plan to install a separator on one of the downleads for the Elite, and then use the second one for an additional STB. But that's the future. In total I have about 1000-1100 channels.

My Dish Settings are like this, and by and large they seem to work:

Tuner1-Bird1:
Satellite: EchoStar 7 (119.0)
Connection: Separate
LNB Type: OCS-DP
LNB Frequency: 11250
22 KHz: Off
LNB Power: On
Transponder: 12239
Diseqc : Port 1
Legacy Switch: Off

Tuner1-Bird2:
Satellite: EchoStar 8.x (110.0)
LNB Type: OCS-DP
Transponder: 12224
Diseqc : Port 2

Tuner1-Bird3:
Satellite: Nimiq 1 (91.0)
LNB Type: Single
Transponder: 12224
Diseqc : Port 3

So, what's the deal, you ask. Well, I have noticed many times that I will select a channel, and I will get a "No Signal" message. The signal quality orange bar in the Channel Information Bar will be at zero. This is not a "Scrambled" message -- it's telling me that it has no signal whatsoever. When this happens, I eventually figured out that I could frequently switch to the other tuner, select the same channel number, and it would pop right in with great signal quality. Through some serious experimentation, I determined the following situation:

Sometimes, but definitely not always, if I have one tuner on a channel on 110, and the other on a channel on 91, one or the other will be blocked. In other words, activating Port 1 on one downline causes Port 3 on the other downline to go dead (likely because it has also been switched to Port 1 and now the tuner has no signal for the selected channel). In my example above, I eventually discovered that if I had a "No Signal" message on Tuner 2, I could go to Tuner 1, select a channel on the same bird as Tuner 2, and then when I returned to Tuner 2, the signal was there and fine.

I do not know if I have a setting wrong, or the DPP is flaky, or what. But on the basis of a whole lot of other symptoms I have seen in the last couple of weeks, I strongly suspect the problem is in the port switching logic of the Elite. The problem is exceptionally random and is very hard to repeat under controlled conditions. Of the three satellites, one does not seemed to be favored more as a victim than the others.

Now that I have isolated this, it offers a root-cause explanation for many things I have observed as "strange behavior". For example:

* Recordings that just freeze up for no apparent reason (I might have been channel-surfing on the other tuner at the time)

* Scheduled recording that just never happened, even though the signal was fine when I checked it and it worked the night before (the other tuner was set differently)

* Different numbers of total channels between the two tuners

I do not want to bring this up to SV until others have had a chance to see if it might be something they have experienced, or can tell me what I might have set up wrong. Anybody else seen these symptoms, especially the "No Signal" message? Note that this is exclusively something involved with the Elite, because of the dual tuners.

This needs an explanation especially if I (and others) want to add that second STB I mentioned above. As it is, switching channels on one box would likely mess up operation of the other box. Yuk.

[coolsat]

I myself also have been experiencing the same problem.Without the 91 sat.I am still trying to figure it out.If I find a fix I will def. let you know.

[big frank]

Dude, I have the exact same problem you have. EXACTLY! Only think I haven't noticed is wether I have less channels on one tuner than the other, though I haven't looked for it.

I am running on two Legacy dual LNB with 2 4x1 switches with two lines coming into the house for the two tuners.

Now, I have added another Elite to the mix. Just running one tuner on each to test them before I go further. None of the bugs have changed. I have the same problem on both STB's that you mention above. So, while it may be a switch problem, it's not just wth the DPP and DP LNB's.

I have found also that if you have a no signal message, you can go to MENU>>>Installation>>>dish settings>>> and go to a TP that has a better signal. Then go back out of it and the channel will work fine.

Also, in the last few days, I have experienced low and lossed signal when testing 110 and 119. I thought it may be Charlie testing but not sure about that. Hope this is some information you can use.

[richehome]

I can confirm the problem of no signal and no quality, and when you switch tuners and tune to he same channel, the signal magically comes back. I tried to turn off power to the lnb, (but I have 2 STB's connected to the DPP500) to see if that would help, but it didnt correct itself until I changed tuners. I dont have a third lnb connected, yet. I have a seperator for the 2 tuners from the DPP500.

My only other comment, is that this box is awesome, and so much better than the Pansat 250sm. The guide on the 250sm needs some serious work.

[SystemDude]

Well at least I feel a LOT better knowing I did not make some silly mistake in the setup parameters or something. Weird thing is, this explains so many of the strange effects I have been observing.

Now we just need to put our heads together and come up with something more than just bruised heads.....

[big frank]

Originally Posted by SystemDude

Well at least I feel a LOT better knowing I did not make some silly mistake in the setup parameters or something. Weird thing is, this explains so many of the strange effects I have been observing.

Now we just need to put our heads together and come up with something more than just bruised heads.....

Is there any easy way to report bugs, and if there is, are they doing anything about the bug reports? I noticed that they spent some time on the SV8000 adding features (new bin yesterday), yet they don't seem to be working on the bugs for the Elite.

[zekester]

Hopefully the next fact file will address these issues. Good catch guys. I haven't setup the dual tuner part yet. But the latest Bev fix is slow to change channels, DN is OK.

[SystemDude]

Originally Posted by big frank

Is there any easy way to report bugs, and if there is, are they doing anything about the bug reports? I noticed that they spent some time on the SV8000 adding features (new bin yesterday), yet they don't seem to be working on the bugs for the Elite.

I spent about an hour or two yesterday creating a massively detailed email and sent it off to SV tech support, detailing all of the anomalies I had discovered over the past weeks, centering on this one. Unfortunately my relative newness in the DSS arena caused me to put my foot squarely on a cowpat.....

I had not realized that the "OCS-DP" operational parameter to service DP LNB's is not a feature of the original box's programming, but instead was introduced with the later, customized BIN's. (At least this accounts for why I had difficulty 'finding' this option early on in my setup experience!). Tech support realized this immediately and naturally, in accord with their policy, refused to deal with the email. Drat and double drat! I have redrafted the email but likely have now damaged what I thought was going to be a good working relationship. Time will tell.

But it caused me to think about something: if the problem is in the tuner / LNB / frequency switching logic, and at least some of that logic has been modified by the shadowy "third parties" to accommodate such things as DPP heads, is there a possibility that the problem is not in the original box logic at all but in the modifications? As a programmer myself (of much more mundane stuff) I know it's tricky wandering around inside of somebody else's code world.

Frank, I note that you use legacy LNB's and discrete switches, which means you don't use the "OCS-DP" option, but my concerns remain.

[big frank]

Originally Posted by SystemDude

I spent about an hour or two yesterday creating a massively detailed email and sent it off to SV tech support, detailing all of the anomalies I had discovered over the past weeks, centering on this one. Unfortunately my relative newness in the DSS arena caused me to put my foot squarely on a cowpat.....

I had not realized that the "OCS-DP" operational parameter to service DP LNB's is not a feature of the original box's programming, but instead was introduced with the later, customized BIN's. (At least this accounts for why I had difficulty 'finding' this option early on in my setup experience!). Tech support realized this immediately and naturally, in accord with their policy, refused to deal with the email. Drat and double drat! I have redrafted the email but likely have now damaged what I thought was going to be a good working relationship. Time will tell.

But it caused me to think about something: if the problem is in the tuner / LNB / frequency switching logic, and at least some of that logic has been modified by the shadowy "third parties" to accommodate such things as DPP heads, is there a possibility that the problem is not in the original box logic at all but in the modifications? As a programmer myself (of much more mundane stuff) I know it's tricky wandering around inside of somebody else's code world.

Frank, I note that you use legacy LNB's and discrete switches, which means you don't use the "OCS-DP" option, but my concerns remain.

Yes, I use the Legacys and have the saem problems you ahve been having. I was going to switch to a DPP, but now I may wait to see what happens for awhile.

I have been having some quality issues as well as other issues as of late. Sometimes I have good quality, yet is says scrambled. And sometimes I have very low quality, and have good picture.

When I tweek my dish to get the best quality on one say, I loos most if not all quality on the other sat. There is very little adjustment between the two Charlie sats for me to even get them to show up on my STB. I believe this to be a dish pointing problem at this point, but it may have somethign to do with the Legacys.


I did read about the OCS-DP being something that was added. Both my Elites came with V1.01 factory file and it didn't have the OCS-DP setting in it. Are you saying that SV disreguarded all your issues because you are using a DPP LNB, or they just don't want to talk to you about it because it's something that was added 3rd party? If it's the latter, then that could be a problem as most people use the DP or DPP LNB now.

Funny, on another site, I had a guy tell me that Legacys were my problem, and that I needed to run DP technology to make the Elite work right.

[SystemDude]

Originally Posted by big frank

Yes, I use the Legacys and have the saem problems you ahve been having. I was going to switch to a DPP, but now I may wait to see what happens for awhile.

I have been having some quality issues as well as other issues as of late. Sometimes I have good quality, yet is says scrambled. And sometimes I have very low quality, and have good picture.

When I tweek my dish to get the best quality on one say, I loos most if not all quality on the other sat. There is very little adjustment between the two Charlie sats for me to even get them to show up on my STB. I believe this to be a dish pointing problem at this point, but it may have somethign to do with the Legacys.

Reminds me of the first day up on my roof trying to get any signal at all. The combination of all the variables (azimuth, elevation, skew) was just too much because I had not done anything like that before. I thought I could "cheat" by looking at other dishes in the neighbourhood, but many of them turned out to be looking at other birds. Luckily, then I found the DishPointer site.

And it occurs to me that for those using non-DP technology, there is another variable -- the spacing between the horns. That must be as critical to reception as skew. Do you have the possibility of adjusting this on yours? (For the life of me I do not know how the folks with elliptical dishes and four or more LNB's keep their sanity!)