# ViP622 OTA Antenna... weak reception



## jrdnyquist (Sep 13, 2006)

Hello,

I just subscribed to Dish and love it so far. My only complaint with the 622 is the OTA signal strength. My Antenna picks up around 15 channels in SD and 5 or 6 in HD when attached to my TV. The very same Antenna only picks up ONE channel when plugged into the 622. What gives?

I pay for Dish locals but the locals are SD in my area. I want to use the Antenna to record locals in high deff. on the 622 in the Charlotte, NC area.

Any suggestions, thoughts, comments? Obviously the Antenna is OK on my Samsung HL-S5679W TV.

Thanks!
-jrdnyquist


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## Matt Beachy (Jun 15, 2006)

jrdnyquist said:


> My only complaint with the 622 is the OTA signal strength. My Antenna picks up around 15 channels in SD and 5 or 6 in HD when attached to my TV. The very same Antenna only picks up ONE channel when plugged into the 622. What gives?


I have had a similar experience with the 622. I have a Sony KD-34XBR970. The internal tuner in my Sony does a better job holding the ota signal than my 622 does. Initially I had my antenna in the attic. I have since moved it onto my roof and am now getting good signal strength on the 622. The Sony is still incrementally stronger, but moving the antenna outside has allowed me to get a good signal from the 622. I can't say for sure what would work best for you because I don't know how far away you are from the tower(s) you are pulling from, but I highly recommend the Antennas Direct 91XG UHF Antenna (http://www.solidsignal.com/prod_display.asp?main_cat=03&CAT=&PROD=AD-91XG) and the Channel Master 7775 UHF Premap with Power Supply (http://www.solidsignal.com/prod_display.asp?PROD=ANC7775).


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## jrdnyquist (Sep 13, 2006)

Hmm OK I was thinking about doing something along those lines anyways which leads me to my next question. Can I split the Antenna off to other TVs and if so do I need some sort of powered splitter? The end goal would be to power two to four HD OTA inputs.


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## Bill R (Dec 20, 2002)

jrdnyquist said:


> Any suggestions, thoughts, comments? Obviously the Antenna is OK on my Samsung HL-S5679W TV.
> 
> Thanks!
> -jrdnyquist


Is your antenna one of those amplified ones? I have found that some of the amplified antennas do not work well with the 622 (especially the indoor antennas). The problem could also be multipath (signals from multiple directions). Some tuners handle it better than others.

On my 622 with an outdoor antenna (non-amplified) the ATSC tuner picks three stations (from almost 50 miles away) that the digital tuner on my TV doesn't even see (signal strength is zero). I wonder if your 622 has a bad tuner?


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## jrdnyquist (Sep 13, 2006)

Bill R said:


> Is your antenna one of those amplified ones? I have found that some of the amplified antennas do not work well with the 622 (especially the indoor antennas). The problem could also be multipath (signals from multiple directions). Some tuners handle it better than others.
> 
> On my 622 with an outdoor antenna (non-amplified) the ATSC tuner picks three stations (from almost 50 miles away) that the digital tuner on my TV doesn't even see (signal strength is zero). I wonder if your 622 has a bad tuner?


Yes it's a Terk Amplified Antenna, but the amp is just a wall wart plugin with a pass through for the cable. I can easilly remove the amplifier and try it. I'll do that tonight.

Ultimately I have to get OTA into 3 seperate inputs though, my TV, the 622, and another TV upstairs. I hope to find a solution to give me a solid signal in all three with one antenna.


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## ChuckA (Feb 7, 2006)

jrdnyquist said:


> Hello,
> 
> I just subscribed to Dish and love it so far. My only complaint with the 622 is the OTA signal strength. My Antenna picks up around 15 channels in SD and 5 or 6 in HD when attached to my TV. The very same Antenna only picks up ONE channel when plugged into the 622. What gives?
> 
> ...


When you say SD and HD channels are you refering to analog and digital channels (not the same thing)? The OTA tuner in the 622 will not pickup any analog channels. It handles digital only so if you have 5 or 6 digital channels in your area, that's all you should expect to get with the 622 OTA.


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## Matt Beachy (Jun 15, 2006)

jrdnyquist said:


> Hmm OK I was thinking about doing something along those lines anyways which leads me to my next question. Can I split the Antenna off to other TVs and if so do I need some sort of powered splitter? The end goal would be to power two to four HD OTA inputs.


You would likely need an amplified splitter. A regular splitter is going to give you some signal loss. I actually have my antenna running through an amplified splitter after the pre amp and power supply. I'm using a Channel Master 3044 (http://www.solidsignal.com/prod_display.asp?PROD=SPDA3044). I did that so I could run one feed directly into the tv and one into the 622. There was no discernable change in signal strength after adding the amplified splitter, which is what I was hoping for. Of course I'm only going through about 3' of cable from the splitter to the tv and the 622. I'm not sure how far you could go from the splitter without getting some signal drop.


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## jrdnyquist (Sep 13, 2006)

ChuckA said:


> When you say SD and HD channels are you refering to analog and digital channels (not the same thing)? The OTA tuner in the 622 will not pickup any analog channels. It handles digital only so if you have 5 or 6 digital channels in your area, that's all you should expect to get with the 622 OTA.


I understand that. I want the 5-6 HD (digital) channels to show up in the 622 the same way they do on the Samung TV. Sorry mentioning SD may have thrown that off.


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## LtMunst (Aug 24, 2005)

jrdnyquist said:


> I understand that. I want the 5-6 HD (digital) channels to show up in the 622 the same way they do on the Samung TV. Sorry mentioning SD may have thrown that off.


Did you try entering each of the OTAs manually? On my unit, the receiver only found a couple of channels with the automatic scan. When I entered each channel manually, they were all picked up no problem.


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## Bill R (Dec 20, 2002)

jrdnyquist said:


> Yes it's a Terk Amplified Antenna, but the amp is just a wall wart plugin with a pass through for the cable. I can easilly remove the amplifier and try it. I'll do that tonight.


Do NOT remove the wall wart and power injector on a Terk antenna. Your antenna won't work without it (according to the online manual). The Terk amplified antennas have a off/on switch on the power injector (conected to the wall wart via a short cable) for the amp. You might want to change the switch to the other position and see if that helps.


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## jcrobso (Mar 30, 2005)

I use a good regular UHF in my attic and a RF amp. no problems with the HDTV or the 622. 
Check http://antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx for info. john


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## DanoP (Sep 29, 2006)

I have this antenna plugged into my 622:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/i...014&cp=&origkw=terk&kw=terk&parentPage=search

It's a Terk and it does a very good job. Actually this is a copycat of the Silver Senser antenna.....difference is that it is amplified and adds a pair of rabbit ears (that you don't see in the picture).

Prior to my 622 I had it plugged into DirecTV's H10 but my performance is better with the 622. YMMV.


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## tommiet (Dec 29, 2005)

I live about 30 miles north of Charlotte and get great siginal from my outside antenna. I get all the HD channels and a boat of of SD's. Via my 622, WSOC is running about 88-95%. Connect it to my SONY tv and it's about 100+.

I got my antanna from SolidSignal.

tom



jrdnyquist said:


> Hello,
> 
> I just subscribed to Dish and love it so far. My only complaint with the 622 is the OTA signal strength. My Antenna picks up around 15 channels in SD and 5 or 6 in HD when attached to my TV. The very same Antenna only picks up ONE channel when plugged into the 622. What gives?
> 
> ...


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## Jim5506 (Jun 7, 2004)

The difference between getting a picture and not with digital can be as little as 2-3 points on the signal meter. Perhaps your TV has a superior tuner and the 622 is just excellent. In that case you need a better antenna, Terk's are not in that category.


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## cooldude919 (Sep 21, 2006)

Anyone get their 622 to say it has 100% signal? Ill have to post a picture, but my 622 says that i get my local nbc station at 100% signal a lot of the times. Sometimes it will be 96-98, but a lot of the times its pegged at 100. Any idea why? This station is 33 miles away, yet cbs and fox local towers are only ~5-6miles away, and i get less signal with them? Antenna is a channel master up in the attic. My guess is the direction its pointed must be directly at the nbc tower?


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## whatchel1 (Jan 11, 2006)

cooldude919 said:


> Anyone get their 622 to say it has 100% signal? Ill have to post a picture, but my 622 says that i get my local nbc station at 100% signal a lot of the times. Sometimes it will be 96-98, but a lot of the times its pegged at 100. Any idea why? This station is 33 miles away, yet cbs and fox local towers are only ~5-6miles away, and i get less signal with them? Antenna is a channel master up in the attic. My guess is the direction its pointed must be directly at the nbc tower?


The nbc may be running a full power transmitter while the other might be running lower power. So may have nothing to do with your antenna.


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## normang (Nov 14, 2002)

Depending on your personal experience, many people find that Terk Antenna's are over-priced and do not live up to their hype and have been replaced by Silver Sensor's that are much cheaper and wound up with better signals. If more is needed, small bow-tie antenna's will provide much better signal reception as well.

my 622 is connected to a bow-tie antenna indoors and I get excellent reception. I even split it to my 942, which also works well..

The biggest problem is whether all your channels are located in the same direction, if not, then you can lose strength and wind up trying to resolve multi-path issues.

Going to http://www.antennaweb.org and getting directions for your digital channels and making sure that your antenna is aimed correctly could resolve some issues..


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## DanoP (Sep 29, 2006)

normang said:


> Depending on your personal experience, many people find that Terk Antenna's are over-priced and do not live up to their hype and have been replaced by Silver Sensor's that are much cheaper and wound up with better signals. If more is needed, small bow-tie antenna's will provide much better signal reception as well.
> 
> my 622 is connected to a bow-tie antenna indoors and I get excellent reception. I even split it to my 942, which also works well..
> 
> ...


The Terk I cited in my earlier post is better than the silver sensor. In general I agee that Terks are the Bose of the antenna world. Wierd designs that are expensive and underperform based on reviews I've seen. But Terk builds a silver sensor clone that is diffenent in that it adds rabbit ears for VHF receiption (silver sensor is just UHF) and it is amplified. It is the best indoor antenna I've tried. Actually I have it run in parallel with a Ratshack double bowtie and together I get a strength of at least 75 on all major digital networks.


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## jrdnyquist (Sep 13, 2006)

I ended up going with a Lacrosse outdoor multi-directional from Solid Signal. Once I ran the line in and split it to both the TV and the 622 I found that they were *roughly* the same as far as picking up channels.

My original post was wrong, the 622 seems as good as my Samsung's ATSC tuner.

-jrdnyquist


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