# Getting a "Searching for Satellite signal on 1 & 2"



## Larry Daughtrey (Feb 14, 2006)

And when I click the "more info" button it says to check cables etc and hit the red reset button but it just keeps doing it.
I checked the Test Signal Strength and it shows 94% on tuner 1 and 2.
My other box is working fine.
Any Ideas?
Thanks
Larry


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## cabanaboy1977 (Nov 16, 2005)

Did you try a reset with the red button? If that didn't work, can you tell what is your set up from the dish to the R15 (mulitswitch/stacker/splitters/etc)?


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## Jetszone (Apr 18, 2006)

I received the "Searching for Satellite signal on 1 & 2" info box last night because of some heavy rain. This in itself is not a problem, however the info box stayed on the screen while I was watching a recorded show. This is quite annoying, the info box only needs to appear when the signal is lost and perhaps when the signal is found. While watching the recorded program and seeing this annoying box, the screen preceeded to go into the screen saver mode. I had to press play on the remote and the show came back. The show was still playing while the screen saver was on, so I had to rewind a little. Once the signal was back everything was back to normal. 

Anyone else ever have this happen?


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## cabanaboy1977 (Nov 16, 2005)

Jetszone said:


> Anyone else ever have this happen?


Yes, this is another bug that they are working on fixing.


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## Larry Daughtrey (Feb 14, 2006)

My problem "fixed" itself again. Hopefully it wont happen for a 3rd time. 
Im in Arizona and there were no clouds at all.


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## gigascott (May 3, 2006)

Yeah, I have been having this problem off and on for a while now. Mostly it would be only one line no getting a signal, which is kind of weird that one line would have a signal and the other wouldn't when they come from the same dish. I called Directv advanced tech support to see if they could figure it out when it was happening. At that time I was having a problem with my signal on 1. Under advisement of the tech guy, I switched the satellite inputs. It would be assumed that the problem would then switch from line 1 to line 2. However, the problem stayed on line 1. The tech then thought that I might have a bad box. He told me to do a hard reset by unplugging everything from the box and replugging everything back in and then called back if it happened again to get a new box. It happened again and I was sent a new box. I hooked up the box last weekend and everything seemed fine. But then on Sunday night the problem came back which is annoying. However, while I was having this problem on line 1 the receiver was tuned in the Bravo network. I turned to EPSN and the problem went away. I am not sure if this means anything but seems kind of weird. When the problem occurs again I will see if it seems to happen on a group of channels over another set of channels. Thoughts?



Jetszone said:


> I received the "Searching for Satellite signal on 1 & 2" info box last night because of some heavy rain. This in itself is not a problem, however the info box stayed on the screen while I was watching a recorded show. This is quite annoying, the info box only needs to appear when the signal is lost and perhaps when the signal is found. While watching the recorded program and seeing this annoying box, the screen preceeded to go into the screen saver mode. I had to press play on the remote and the show came back. The show was still playing while the screen saver was on, so I had to rewind a little. Once the signal was back everything was back to normal.
> 
> Anyone else ever have this happen?


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## cabanaboy1977 (Nov 16, 2005)

Gigascott, Welcome to the forum.

Can you tell us a little bit more about your setup? (MulitSwitch/LNB's/other receivers/etc)


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## gigascott (May 3, 2006)

Good to be here. I have a dish that has two outputs. One output is split with one line going to my bonus room to a Hughes Directv/Tivo receiver and the other going to the R15 in my living room. The second output goes directly to my R15. I have had my Hughes Directv/Tivo for over 4 years and the thing still works great. The hard drive is pretty loud and the small capacity (30 hours) was becoming annoying so I wanted to upgrade to the R15. I have been somewhat pleased with the R15. It has some new features and the 100 hour capacity is great. I have not been so thrilled with it crashing sometimes and the lost signal problem. However, I figure that this will be resolved over time with upgrades. Let me know if you would like more info. Thanks.



cabanaboy1977 said:


> Gigascott, Welcome to the forum.
> 
> Can you tell us a little bit more about your setup? (MulitSwitch/LNB's/other receivers/etc)


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## sheridan1952 (Mar 16, 2006)

Whoa, *RED FLAG*!!!

You said the dirty word..."split". If you are using a splitter, that is the source of your trouble. Sat feeds cannot be split. If you need more than the two feeds from your sat, you have to install a multi switch, run BOTH sat feeds into it and then feed your receivers.

You can test that by taking the splitter out of line and running both feeds directly (do not pass GO) to the R15. Once you are sure, then buy a simple 2 input 4 output multiswitch.


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## cabanaboy1977 (Nov 16, 2005)

gigascott said:


> Good to be here. I have a dish that has two outputs. One output is split with one line going to my bonus room to a Hughes Directv/Tivo receiver and the other going to the R15 in my living room. The second output goes directly to my R15. I have had my Hughes Directv/Tivo for over 4 years and the thing still works great. The hard drive is pretty loud and the small capacity (30 hours) was becoming annoying so I wanted to upgrade to the R15. I have been somewhat pleased with the R15. It has some new features and the 100 hour capacity is great. I have not been so thrilled with it crashing sometimes and the lost signal problem. However, I figure that this will be resolved over time with upgrades. Let me know if you would like more info. Thanks.


Ok, so you have a two coax cables coming off your dish, correct? If you only have two cables you'll need a 2x4 Multiswitch. With the two cables off the dish going into the the Multiswitch and then you'll have 4 leads. 2 going to the Tivo and 2 going to the R15. You can't use a standard splitter with D* equipment. If I missunderstood your setup let me know.

edit: Looks like sheridan1952 beat me to it.


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## sheridan1952 (Mar 16, 2006)

What Cabanaboy said.


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## gigascott (May 3, 2006)

Actually, you guys are probably right, it is probably a Multiswitch. I just didn't use the corect terminology. Directv setup it up for me and it worked great on the Hughes receiver. The lost signal only came when I got the R15 and it rarely happens. Sorry for the confusion.



cabanaboy1977 said:


> Ok, so you have a two coax cables coming off your dish, correct? If you only have two cables you'll need a 2x4 Multiswitch. With the two cables off the dish going into the the Multiswitch and then you'll have 4 leads. 2 going to the Tivo and 2 going to the R15. You can't use a standard splitter with D* equipment. If I missunderstood your setup let me know.
> 
> edit: Looks like sheridan1952 beat me to it.


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## sheridan1952 (Mar 16, 2006)

Take a look at it. If it is a multiswitch, BOTH dish feeds MUST go into it first. And all receiver feeds come from the ouitputs. If it is a multiswitch and it isn't wired that way, the installer screwed up. Take a look and let us know.

BTW, a splitter will be a tiny thing with 1 in and 2 out. That is never used. (Well, almost never. But we're not dealing with multiple multiswitches in parallel.)

You know, if it is a multiswitch you have, AND it IS wired correctly, then just for grins, I would take it out of line and run both feeds directly to the R15 (use couplers) and see what happens. It could be the switch is defective. Just a thought.


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## cabanaboy1977 (Nov 16, 2005)

Gigascott, like sheridan say, it you have a multiswitch there will be two leads going to the multiswitch and 4 leads coming off that (2 going to the Tivo and 2 going to the R15). If this is your setup (which I think it might be) you might want to switching the R15 and the Tivo. If your problem stays with the R15 I would think something is wrong with the R15. If your problem move over to the Tivo you have a bad cable run or a bad Multiswitch.

Did D just come out and install the R15 or did you? Depending on the run of the cables you might need a powered Multiswitch. Let us know if you have a powered Multiswitch or not.


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## gigascott (May 3, 2006)

Thanks for the info. I am almost 100% sure that it is a multiswitch. When I had the directv installer set everything up for me, I had the Hughes Directv/Tivo receiver and an ordinary on input Directv receiver. He split one output from the dish using the multiswitch and the second output went directly to the Hughes Directv/Tivo receiver. When I got the R15, I switched the ordinary Directv receiver with the Directv/Tivo receiver and only hooked up the single like. I hadn't hooked up the second line yet because we hardly use that room and I haven't had the time. Why does both dish feeds need to go through the multiswitch? I don't see why this would matter.

I am pretty sure that the multiswitch is not powered. I will look at it tonight and let you know. Thanks again.



cabanaboy1977 said:


> Gigascott, like sheridan say, it you have a multiswitch there will be two leads going to the multiswitch and 4 leads coming off that (2 going to the Tivo and 2 going to the R15). If this is your setup (which I think it might be) you might want to switching the R15 and the Tivo. If your problem stays with the R15 I would think something is wrong with the R15. If your problem move over to the Tivo you have a bad cable run or a bad Multiswitch.
> 
> Did D just come out and install the R15 or did you? Depending on the run of the cables you might need a powered Multiswitch. Let us know if you have a powered Multiswitch or not.


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## cabanaboy1977 (Nov 16, 2005)

gigascott said:


> Why does both dish feeds need to go through the multiswitch? I don't see why this would matter.


Hope fully some else can answer this, I don't know the techincal answer.

Make sure when you check tonight that you see how many leads are coming off the dish and how many are going in to the mulitswitch. the multiswitch usally says on it what is is. You should see the two in and 4 out.


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## CCarncross (Jul 19, 2005)

gigascott, any correct cable install requires that both outputs from your dish go to an approved multiswitch, then the outputs of the multiswitch can go wherever they need to as long as they arent split either...with a dual output single LNB dish, you cant run just one line to a multiswitch, both must go to a 2x4 or more multiswitch....


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## techNoodle (Nov 15, 2005)

cabanaboy1977 said:


> Hope fully some else can answer this, I don't know the techincal answer.
> 
> Make sure when you check tonight that you see how many leads are coming off the dish and how many are going in to the mulitswitch. the multiswitch usally says on it what is is. You should see the two in and 4 out.


Signals from the odd and even transponders on the satellite are selected by changing a voltage level going back up the RG6 cable from 13V to 18V. Both leads from the dish antenna must be connected to the multiswitch so that one can be fixed at 13V and the other at 18V. This way, any IRD connected to the output side of the multiswitch can get to the correctly polarized signal.

So, if a splitter is used, and you have your R15 wanting to tune to an odd transponder, and your HNS box wanting to tune to an even transponder, the voltage levels are going to clash, and one box will lose the signal.

I hope this was not too technical.


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## carl6 (Nov 16, 2005)

And to expand on that for the 3-LNB dish (which has 4 coax connectors)...

You have the 13V and 18V signal to select polarity, plus you have the presence or absence of a 22KHz tone to select which LNB (satellite) is used.

This results in 4 possible combinations: 13V no tone, 13V tone, 18V no tone, 18V tone. In this case, you must use a 4 input multiswitch and connect all 4 lines between the dish and the multiswitch.

In either case (the 2 input or the 4 input multiswitch), the multiswitch has to be able to permanently lock a connection from the dish to one of the possible "request" signals, so for a single dual LNB dish, one line is always locked to 13V and one line is always locked to 18V. For the multi-satellite dish, one line is always locked to each of the 4 possible combinations.

That way, no matter what channel you watch on your receiver, when the receiver asks the dish for the applicable polarity and tone, the multiswitch will have that particular combination available and can cross connect the correct line from the dish to that specific receiver.

Carl


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## carl6 (Nov 16, 2005)

gigascott said:


> He split one output from the dish using the multiswitch and the second output went directly to the Hughes Directv/Tivo receiver.


There is no way to split one output from the dish. Even if the installer used a multiswitch, doing so with only one connection to the dish will not work. See the above two posts from Technoodle and myself for the reasons.

Carl


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## matty8199 (Dec 4, 2005)

Jetszone said:


> I received the "Searching for Satellite signal on 1 & 2" info box last night because of some heavy rain. This in itself is not a problem, however the info box stayed on the screen while I was watching a recorded show. This is quite annoying, the info box only needs to appear when the signal is lost and perhaps when the signal is found. While watching the recorded program and seeing this annoying box, the screen preceeded to go into the screen saver mode. I had to press play on the remote and the show came back. The show was still playing while the screen saver was on, so I had to rewind a little. Once the signal was back everything was back to normal.
> 
> Anyone else ever have this happen?


Yeah, and this is another bug that I sincerely hope D* is working on fixing - there's no reason to leave the "searching for signal" message on the screen while you're watching a recorded show.


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## gigascott (May 3, 2006)

I finally had a chance to check the hook up for my dish last night. I was wrong in that both lines from the dish do to go a multiswitch. I am not sure why I thought otherwise. However, the one that I have is a 3 x 8 multiswitch. Could this be causing some problems? Thanks.



carl6 said:


> And to expand on that for the 3-LNB dish (which has 4 coax connectors)...
> 
> You have the 13V and 18V signal to select polarity, plus you have the presence or absence of a 22KHz tone to select which LNB (satellite) is used.
> 
> ...


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## sheridan1952 (Mar 16, 2006)

It's possible. The switch could be bad. Using couplers, disconnect the lines from the switch and run both dish feeds straight to the R15 and check. If you still have the same symptoms, then you're left with a bad cable or connector, a bad LNB or a bad R15.

A bad connector could be anything from a stray shield wire shorting the feed to the "stinger" (center conductor) not being long enough and losing connection in the fitting during outside temperature changes.

Process of elimination.



gigascott said:


> I finally had a chance to check the hook up for my dish last night. I was wrong in that both lines from the dish do to go a multiswitch. I am not sure why I thought otherwise. However, the one that I have is a 3 x 8 multiswitch. Could this be causing some problems? Thanks.


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## gigascott (May 3, 2006)

Well, the thing is the signal lost issue doesn't happen all the time. I get it like once a week at different times. So, if I bypass the multiswitch I will probably have to wait a while to see if it helped. And doing this will disconnect my other box. I am just wondering if having the 3 x 8 multiswitch a bad thing? If it isn't a big deal and it should work fine then there may be another problem. This problem started only with the R15. This is my second R15 since I returned the first one because of this problem. I was also wondering if others were having the same issue and if this might be a bug or something. Thoughts? Thanks for the help.

-gigascott



sheridan1952 said:


> It's possible. The switch could be bad. Using couplers, disconnect the lines from the switch and run both dish feeds straight to the R15 and check. If you still have the same symptoms, then you're left with a bad cable or connector, a bad LNB or a bad R15.
> 
> A bad connector could be anything from a stray shield wire shorting the feed to the "stinger" (center conductor) not being long enough and losing connection in the fitting during outside temperature changes.
> 
> Process of elimination.


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## sheridan1952 (Mar 16, 2006)

Having a multiswitch is not a bad thing, they are used all the time in situations just like yours where you have a need for more feeds than the dish has outputs. I've had one in my system since '98 with no problems. That doesn't you (or anyone else) won't have problems. Like any piece of electronic equipment, they can (not necessarily WILL) fail.


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## gigascott (May 3, 2006)

Yeah, I know that having a multiswitch is a good thing but is having a 3 x 8 multiswitch not as good as having a 2 x 4? Does it matter? Should I try to replace the 3 x 8 with a 2 x 4? Where can I get one? Best Buy? Thanks.

-gigascott



sheridan1952 said:


> Having a multiswitch is not a bad thing, they are used all the time in situations just like yours where you have a need for more feeds than the dish has outputs. I've had one in my system since '98 with no problems. That doesn't you (or anyone else) won't have problems. Like any piece of electronic equipment, they can (not necessarily WILL) fail.


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## sheridan1952 (Mar 16, 2006)

No, it doesn't matter. The 3 x 8 has the 2 sat input feeds AND an input for an OTA antenna, and then you have the 8 outputs. The 2 x 4 just has the 2 sat input feeds and only 4 outputs. If there is no problem (after testing) with the multiswitch, changing to another will not do anything for you. 

If you do not have an OTA antenna connected, that won't affect anything.


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