Why does a satellite go cold? Why do you have to pull the power and smart card? I have some systems that need this all the time.

Is there anything I could do to revent this from happening?

Thanks,
Mike

I'm no expert, but I'd suggest trying a UPS as an experiment.

I joke about the little need for a ground on a satellite dish -- okay, okay, I'll put 'em in -- here in Southern California, especially away from the hills, but I bet you have a totally different weather and especially static electricity situation.

Are there any lightning rods within ten miles of you on anybody's home or ranch property? I can't say I have seen any except on the 50+ story buildings in downtown Los Angeles. Never on anything as short as six or ten stories.

If you have them nearby, chances are good that static is a part of the daily life, and temporary insanity, of satellite receivers in your area. Good dish grounds (EARTH grounds) are absolutely necessary there, just to bleed off the static that will accumulate on the dishes.

Does this ring true at all?

Ernie,

Good advise but it is grounded. We were even wondering if there are to many grounds.

the dish has a ground and the lectric panel has a ground that we share with are head in panel. And our Panamax surge protector. M-5100

This is an on going problem with multi systems that we have installed. Just some more than others.

Mike

I gotta throw this out for perusal. I don't dispute that it could be a grounding/static build up issue, but on a different note;

Are the satellite recievers being turned off when not in use?

I've been integrating Scientific Atlanta 3250's, 8100's, and 8300's, as well as Dish Network QAM recievers. I don't control power (since there's no discretes).

I get calls all the time about no audio, or the HD quits working, etc. This can really be a PITA since the recievers are in racks, or are audio only (with no display to see what's up). I can't walk them through it on the phone.

The only thing that knocks them out of this state is a hard reboot.

Lately I've been forcing customers to turn them off and on, and I have one in my own house now to play with. The problems are diminishing rapidly. I turn mine off when not in use, no funny business for 2 months.

I've heard that some boxes don't do any software updates while in an 'on' state; no update, and they quit working (thank you all you pirates). Anything to this?

Also, along the lines of bad grounds, heat seems to be an issue. These set tops consistently put out more heat than most of the amps I install, and leaving them on all the time doesn't seem to help that either. I've been giving them more room in racks and that seems to help.

Sorry for the long winded post; what I was trying to say is... turn them off?

That would be the first reason I have ever heard of to turn them off, and if it makes a difference, it is VERY important!

My clients rarely need resets, and I always set up the system or the integrated remote with the idea that the receiver will be on full time.

Ernie, my thoughts exactly. Again, the software download thing is neither confirmed nor denied, but it's a good theory. I know that data is sent all the time to satellite recievers... why not CATV boxes?

Again, this problem is only here in Hawaii, and only with SA set top boxes on Oceanic Time Warner. I forget who makes the Dish QAMs, but they lose audio on their Sirius channels from time to time, only on certian channels. Turning it off then back on fixes it.

I wonder if there is something to this 'software download' theory, and if it only happens in certain markets.

I wish that we could just leave on the boxes all the time, but it doesn't seem to be working for us here. I wonder if these issues are specific to hard drive based set to boxes?

Another angle is the local power grid. The power is notoriously crappy, brownouts all the time... maybe that's contributing to my problems. I do put in UPS's a lot... I might start putting the CATV boxes on them, just to fart around.

Speaking of notorious, every transistor in every chip has a range of voltages that it recognizes as zero, a range it recognizes as one, and a band of voltages in between which it might interpret either way or not at all. Brownouts cause power supply voltages to fall in unpredictable and probably unrepeatable ways. When power supply voltages fall, all voltages in a chippified device (computer, PDA, set-top-box) fall. If there is enough power supply voltage to make the chips operate at all, and their input voltages jump around where they should not be, all hell can break loose. It would NOT be farting around to put a UPS on every product in the house that has a microprocessor!

Duly noted Ernie.

I think next job I'm going to A/B test...

The next job I do has a bunch of CATV boxes in the same rack; two for distributed audio, and a bunch for distributed AV.

I might leave on the audio boxes all the time but power them on a fat UPS and see if I get any funny business.

Either way, both solutions (UPS, switching off) would hopefully solve the problem.

We gotta be really close here.