rwolf
05-04-2004, 03:21 PM
I got one of these receivers a couple of weeks ago and just got around to putting up an antenna over the weekend. I live in San Jose, CA where most networks broadcast out of Sutro Tower about 40mi NNW on UHF. I had some success over the weekend but signal strength was only 45% peak with frequent drops to 10% or lower using a really old uhf outdoor. Even with the low signal, I picked up 11 stations.
Yesterday, I picked up a CM 4228 which is supposed to have a 60mi range. I was expecting a huge improvement in signal strength or at least more stability but it still reports mostly 45%. Occationally, it does go up as high as 65-70% but, just as frequently, drops below 20%. Many channels do seem a bit more stable. My next step was to try mounting it higher and adding a possible preamp but the stability had me worried. It made me wonder if something could be wrong with the receiver.
Being worried about a bad receiver already, I got really concerned when the unit froze all of a sudden last night. I was switching to a station that had a pretty stable image and the screen just went black. No response from the remote or the front panel buttons. Had to hit the reset next to the smartcard to get the unit back. Then, this morning, I typed in my zip and rescanned to get guide info which worked but after that, it has rebooted with no warning about 5 times. I've isolated it to when I tune to certain channels (especially from the add/remove channel screen) and once when I was exiting the add/remove channel screen. The only other item of note is that Sutro Tower DTV broadcast is being shutdown for upgrades Monday to Saturday 7am - 5:30pm and I started having this problem shortly after 7am.
Should I be concerned? Is it normal for these receivers to reboot? In addition to the reboots, some of the previously found DTV channels dissapeared all of a sudden (I did not remove them or do a rescan) and came back after reboot. I've read about this problem with the TS160s but never the 360.
Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.
Yesterday, I picked up a CM 4228 which is supposed to have a 60mi range. I was expecting a huge improvement in signal strength or at least more stability but it still reports mostly 45%. Occationally, it does go up as high as 65-70% but, just as frequently, drops below 20%. Many channels do seem a bit more stable. My next step was to try mounting it higher and adding a possible preamp but the stability had me worried. It made me wonder if something could be wrong with the receiver.
Being worried about a bad receiver already, I got really concerned when the unit froze all of a sudden last night. I was switching to a station that had a pretty stable image and the screen just went black. No response from the remote or the front panel buttons. Had to hit the reset next to the smartcard to get the unit back. Then, this morning, I typed in my zip and rescanned to get guide info which worked but after that, it has rebooted with no warning about 5 times. I've isolated it to when I tune to certain channels (especially from the add/remove channel screen) and once when I was exiting the add/remove channel screen. The only other item of note is that Sutro Tower DTV broadcast is being shutdown for upgrades Monday to Saturday 7am - 5:30pm and I started having this problem shortly after 7am.
Should I be concerned? Is it normal for these receivers to reboot? In addition to the reboots, some of the previously found DTV channels dissapeared all of a sudden (I did not remove them or do a rescan) and came back after reboot. I've read about this problem with the TS160s but never the 360.
Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.
