Little to no channels detected. Anything I can do before throwing in the towel?

[jwhazel]

HDHR5-2US, running the most recent firmware (20231214), sitting about 12 miles away from the major broadcast towers.

I've gone through 4 antennas now and I'm having difficulty getting it to lock on to anything. The antennas in question:

• Radio shack generic passive (indoor) - 0
• GE 34134 50 mile active (indoor) - 0
• Best Buy generic 50 mile active (indoor) - 7*
• Antennas Direct 1Max passive (outdoor, mounted to roof) - 0

* It's able to lock the same 7 channels every other channel scan. And when it does lock in, symbol quality is usually so low the stream on most of the channels is blocky/stuttery. I have confirmed that it will stream properly in VLC for at least an hour (got lucky on the symbol strength that day), but it's far from consistent.

I realize that there is an art behind antenna placement and aiming. But with the exact same Best Buy antenna, in the exact same location, with the exact same coax cable, plugged into the amp and strait into my LG G1, I'm able to get 66 regular ATSC 1.0 channels successfully (plus 11 nextgens, although that's irrelevant here). The quality is excellent on most of them with little to no buffering. I've read this thread: viewtopic.php?t=78721 and fully understand the "don't expect miracles" between hdhomerun vs internal tuner part. But this seems like an awfully large disparity between 66 good channels vs 7 flakey ones.

I've attempted just about every combination of the antenna list with and without the amplifier, swapping with multiple other rg6 cables. Is there anything else I can try before I give up on the hdhomerun?

Edit: I've enabled "send diagnostic information" and done a channel scan in case it helps any. Device ID: 106B2316

[signcarver]

You mentioned quality being low but not the strength... typically that close you really need to watch that you aren't over powering the device. I also strongly recommend one use an appropruate LTE filter as too often those signals overload the internal amplifier.

[jwhazel]

You mentioned quality being low but not the strength... typically that close you really need to watch that you aren't over powering the device. I also strongly recommend one use an appropruate LTE filter as too often those signals overload the internal amplifier.

Here's an example of what I'm seeing right now. It will tune 1-2 seconds of blockiness and then freeze.

Code: Select all

[
{
"Resource": "tuner0",
"VctNumber": "41.1",
"VctName": "WDRB",
"Frequency": 581000000,
"SignalStrengthPercent": 35,
"SignalQualityPercent": 0,
"SymbolQualityPercent": 0,
"TargetIP": "...",
"NetworkRate": 0
},
{
"Resource": "tuner1"
}
]

I've tried numerous times, in numerous positions, and it won't work without the amp. The amp is physically bypassable too.

Do tv internal tuners normally have an LTE filter? Is that why my LG works? I'm not opposed to trying one if I could be reasonably assured it would work. But the cost of this experiment keeps incrementing well past what I had planned.

[signcarver]

TVs are single tuner devices that wouldn't have an internal amp to compensate for that split to 2 or 4 tuners. Because the HDHomeRuns have to be able to tune up to 1GHz for possible connection to a cable system the LTE signals that now go down to 608MHz often overload that internal amplifier spitting out noise to "all" channels but for the reported strength, that isn't your issue as I believe nearly anything from that station (and the others in the area) from 12 miles out should be picked up by just about "anything." Personally I would probably turn on sending of diagnostics data and run a scan so SD can take a look (they would need your DeviceID) and in this case most likely a ticket will have to be open as I would be leaning towards hardware failure unless it is something like you chose to use a diplexer as a splitter or there is a problem with the cable which are possibilities (but someone from SD would need to state that rather than me and a ticket to be opened).

[jasonl]

The logs indicate that a hardware failure has occurred. The device is out of warranty at this point, but we can offer a discount on a replacement. Please open a support ticket if you're interested, https://www.silicondust.com/support/trouble-ticket/ .

[Flyoffacliff]

First time I have heard of these LTE filters. I was under the impression the HDHR devices had an internal "filter" that could be set by the software?

[NedS]

First time I have heard of these LTE filters. I was under the impression the HDHR devices had an internal "filter" that could be set by the software?

The HDHomeRun does not contain an internal filter.

[schenpls@gmail.com]

In my opinion the bow tie models work.

[benwood]

I just joined the forum. I owned a really old HD Home Run which still worked, and the apps improved over the years that allowed me to bring up live TV on my phone in the house, etc. Nice novelty. But then my TiVo died, it was about 15 years old, maybe more, and I discovered the model they sold was unreliable and not obtainable either, and astonishingly, with less capacity that I had (thanks to my own upgrade). Seriously, 500MB??

So long story short, I thought I'd try the HD HomeRun Flex. I attached a 4 TB drive to the USB connection, it formatted and works fine.

The only glitch though is that most stuff I record in Seattle is on Channel 9, and that worked for a couple weeks, then it became horrible. I thought my tuner malfunctioned. My OLED LG TV picked that channel up flawlessly (and it is the closest channel at about 5 miles to tower). I reconnected the OLD HD HomeRun tuner, and it worked as well.

Based on tips online at SiliconDust, I put the new Flex into a faraday cage I created with a box, aluminum foil, and metal tape, which would block any local interference, as it was just inches from some other electrical devices (fiber modem, wifi router). But that made no difference.

And then I saw the suggestion to use an in-line LTE filter. My duel panel Channel Master is for the former full band of UHF, and I could see that due to the frequency band allocations/changes, it now will easily bring in LTE and 5g signals. I ran the channel scanner app on my PC and could see Channel 9 (before the filter) was coming like this:

SCANNING: 189000000 (us-bcast:9)
LOCK: none (ss=97 snq=0 seq=0)

SO, I thought maybe that was the issue.

Bought a Channel Master CM-3201 LTE Filter, put it inline today (removing my old 1x3 splitter since I don't need that any more), and so without the splitter, my signal strength for some distant stations actually went up. And Channel 9 came in crystal clear.

Success... thanks for the suggestion, it did work for me. And as more and my 5g and/or 4g LTE towers go up, the problem would have just gotten worse and worse. I can only figure that something went in near my house only a couple weeks ago.

Here's my before data, for the weaker stations:

C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun>hdhomerun_config 192.168.1.187 scan /tuner3

SCANNING: 557000000 (us-bcast:28)
LOCK: 8vsb (ss=90 snq=100 seq=100)
TSID: 0x0C51
PROGRAM 1: 28.1 KBTC
PROGRAM 2: 28.2 NHK_WLD
PROGRAM 3: 28.3 FNX
PROGRAM 4: 28.4 TVW

SCANNING: 521000000 (us-bcast:22)
LOCK: 8vsb (ss=89 snq=76 seq=100)
TSID: 0x0C4D
PROGRAM 3: 13.1 FOX13
PROGRAM 4: 13.2 GRIT
PROGRAM 5: 13.3 Mystery
PROGRAM 6: 13.4 BUZZR
PROGRAM 7: 16.3 TheGRIO
PROGRAM 8: 13.5 Weather

SCANNING: 213000000 (us-bcast:13)
LOCK: 8vsb (ss=79 snq=73 seq=100)
TSID: 0x0C4D
PROGRAM 3: 13.1 FOX13
PROGRAM 4: 13.2 GRIT
PROGRAM 5: 13.3 Mystery
PROGRAM 6: 13.4 BUZZR
PROGRAM 7: 16.3 TheGRIO
PROGRAM 8: 13.5 Weather

SCANNING: 189000000 (us-bcast:9)
LOCK: none (ss=97 snq=0 seq=0)


Channel 9 was not 'found' with the channel scan at all!

And now, after inserting the LTE filter in line:

C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun>hdhomerun_config 192.168.1.187 scan /tuner3

SCANNING: 557000000 (us-bcast:28)
LOCK: 8vsb (ss=95 snq=95 seq=100)
TSID: 0x0C51
PROGRAM 1: 28.1 KBTC
PROGRAM 2: 28.2 NHK_WLD
PROGRAM 3: 28.3 FNX
PROGRAM 4: 28.4 TVW

SCANNING: 521000000 (us-bcast:22)
LOCK: 8vsb (ss=100 snq=100 seq=100)
TSID: 0x0C4D
PROGRAM 3: 13.1 FOX13
PROGRAM 4: 13.2 GRIT
PROGRAM 5: 13.3 Mystery
PROGRAM 6: 13.4 BUZZR
PROGRAM 7: 16.3 TheGRIO
PROGRAM 8: 13.5 Weather

SCANNING: 213000000 (us-bcast:13)
LOCK: 8vsb (ss=83 snq=73 seq=100)
TSID: 0x0C4D
PROGRAM 3: 13.1 FOX13
PROGRAM 4: 13.2 GRIT
PROGRAM 5: 13.3 Mystery
PROGRAM 6: 13.4 BUZZR
PROGRAM 7: 16.3 TheGRIO
PROGRAM 8: 13.5 Weather

SCANNING: 189000000 (us-bcast:9)
LOCK: 8vsb (ss=100 snq=94 seq=100)
TSID: 0x0C39
PROGRAM 3: 9.1 KCTS-HD
PROGRAM 4: 9.2 KIDS
PROGRAM 5: 9.3 CREATE
PROGRAM 6: 9.4 WORLD