# signal loss



## koralis (Aug 10, 2005)

I'm ridiculously annoyed about the "complete signal loss" message, and moderately annoyed by the "partial signal loss" message on my 622.


With a "complete signal loss" Dish won't let me use the guide to browse to an OTA station (which is coming in perfectly fine!)


With "partial signal loss" Dish keeps popping that up periodically even if I could continue to watch the episode, so I need to keep hitting "guide -> exit" to continue watching the show.


I realize that Dish wants to keep people from calling their tech support if it's something that can be corrected themselves, but this is very unfriendly behavior. I accepted that the satellite reception was not-so-great because of the show... now let me get on with my life.


Just thought I'd note the dissatisfaction with the current handling of the issue in case a Dish guy happens to read these threads.


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## [email protected] Network (Jan 5, 2011)

I would recommend a hard reset if you haven't done one yet. Also try a Check Switch Test, and confirm the cables are all tight.


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## koralis (Aug 10, 2005)

Thanks Tommy, but my complaint isn't about having a signal or not... I'm lodging a user-interface complaint... something to be corrected in future versions of the software.

There's no reason to EVER lock out the guide, and no good reason to keep popping up the partial signal message... show it once, then don't show it again until you turn it "off" or something.


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## thomasjk (Jan 10, 2006)

If you press Menu 1 you should be able to bring up the guide. I use this method during bad weather to switch to OTA from SAT.


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## CABill (Mar 20, 2005)

thomasjk said:


> If you press Menu 1 you should be able to bring up the guide. I use this method during bad weather to switch to OTA from SAT.


While you have that method working, be sure you do NOT do the suggested hard reset or check switch. They won't always break access to the Guide, and hence OTA channels, but very often will. DISH may have their reasons to totally block OTA access if there isn't a working Sat connection, but it is truly a disservice to their customers to block access to OTA because a sat signal isn't available.


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## koralis (Aug 10, 2005)

koralis said:


> partial signal message... show it once, then don't show it again until you turn it "off" or something.


Now that I'm thinking about it... the same can be said for the message about some of the program may be lost bit... yes, I can see the scramlbing of imagery, and it's a lot less annoying than the constant pop-ups if it's a particularly bad signal.

(none of these things happen often, but really... it should be obvious from a user-interface-usability standpoint that once a customer is aware of the problem you don't need to keep telling them over and over and over again...)


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## hdcl (Sep 18, 2007)

Has there been an increase of "Total" and "Partial" signal loss with a recent software push? My 622 experiences this at least 3 times a week starting about 2 months ago. Weather has been fine here in Chicago and my other 522 receiver never loses signal. I have tried hard resets of the 622 and the switch. 

When the signal loss happens, the Check Switch routine goes through the 1-50 steps (indicating a problem). After a few hours, everything is fine and Check Switch successfully completes after 4 steps.

There has been no hardware or other changes.


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

OK. I've got a weird one. My 722 has three times in the past two weeks given me the "signal loss - change channels" message on the CD channels (upper 900's). No other channels are affected, but since I tend to run one of those channels as "background" so I'm not seeing programs that are recording I discovered this.

It's no big deal, though once it rebooted me in the middle of doing some recording management. I've just switched to a Sirius channel. And each time I did a hard reboot when I could returning everything to normal. But....

The last time I checked my 612 and the CD channels were fine. Of course they could have been shut down briefly and the two boxes handled it differently.

,just thought I'd mention it.


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## klang (Oct 14, 2003)

hdcl said:


> Has there been an increase of "Total" and "Partial" signal loss with a recent software push? My 622 experiences this at least 3 times a week starting about 2 months ago. Weather has been fine here in Chicago and my other 522 receiver never loses signal. I have tried hard resets of the 622 and the switch.
> 
> When the signal loss happens, the Check Switch routine goes through the 1-50 steps (indicating a problem). After a few hours, everything is fine and Check Switch successfully completes after 4 steps.
> 
> There has been no hardware or other changes.


I experienced those messages on my 622 for a few days sometime in January. My other receivers were working just fine during the interruptions. I did the usual reboots and check switches to no avail. I was about to have Dish send a replacement when it started working normally again.


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## jimec (May 12, 2011)

I have discovered that this seems to occur when my VIP622-DVR is tuned to an Over-The-Air channel with a weak signal on the "swap" channel. Changing from the OTA station to a satellite channel cures the problem.


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## gtal98 (Jan 30, 2011)

jimec said:


> I have discovered that this seems to occur when my VIP622-DVR is tuned to an Over-The-Air channel with a weak signal on the "swap" channel. Changing from the OTA station to a satellite channel cures the problem.


Exactly - the reason the Partial one keeps popping up is the weak OTA signal will come back, and then drop out again. Every time it drops it triggers the box. Why this pops up even when that channel isn't currently being watched is dumb. The receiver should be smart enough to know what it is outputting to the TV sat or OTA and only show you errors for that selected mode of TV viewing. Can one of the DIRT members forward this on as a firmware update suggestion?


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## BillJ (May 5, 2005)

hdcl said:


> Has there been an increase of "Total" and "Partial" signal loss with a recent software push? My 622 experiences this at least 3 times a week starting about 2 months ago. Weather has been fine here in Chicago and my other 522 receiver never loses signal. I have tried hard resets of the 622 and the switch.
> 
> When the signal loss happens, the Check Switch routine goes through the 1-50 steps (indicating a problem). After a few hours, everything is fine and Check Switch successfully completes after 4 steps.
> 
> There has been no hardware or other changes.


I've had some problems with signal loss on the Chicago locals, including Ch. 9 last night. I think there may be problems at the uplink in Chicago. It eventually corrected itself but was off quite a while. Thanks to SuperStation package we were able to switch to a NYC network feed and did not miss more than a minute of the program.


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