Failing UNO4KSE or LNB? Help me diagnose

[Alejandro Alvarez]

Hello,

I've recently bought an UNO4KSE, installed BH and plugged to my old antenna that I havent used since some years ago that was on HS 30 and a tecnician positioned to Astra 19.2.

The signal is good (about 90% on most of the channels), however it randomly drops to 0 and does not automatically recovers.

The main sympton is, I am watching some channel without any issue, then suddenly the image starts pixelating really hard, the signal meters bounces from 0 to max value and eventually it gets completely lost and at this point the only way to recover signal is unplugging the antenna cable from the UNO4K and plugging again. Reset does not help at all.

After plugging and for what I've seen its really random if the signal is going to be lost again in few seconds or it will remain ok for hours or even days.

This does not happen all the time, I would say in a month it has happened 5-6 times.

I've checked the messages and dmesg log of the device and I see lots of "FE tune" messages, if that can help diagnose.

What do you think? Is it a bad unit or maybe its the lbn that needs replacement?

 

[AlexWilMac]

Difficult to say: this is one of those many cases in IT or electronics, where you would need a cross experiment to understand where's the problem: trying another decoder in the same system or trying your decoder on a different system.
I know it's not easy but maybe you can borrow a dismissed decoder from a friend or a reseller to do, at least, the first try.
Surely, is possible that your LNB or your cable (I don't think you have a diseqC switch, as you have only one satellite) got ruined.
Particularly the LNB is at risk, because they got "burnt" by the sun rays.
So, another try might be to change the LNB, but without the cross try I said above, it would be done blindly...
I suspect, from what you report, that is a LNB problem; less likely, a ruined cable. But it's hard to say...

 

[Alejandro Alvarez]

Hi Alexwilmac, yeah the LNB is directly connected to the STB, there is not diseqc or any other element in between.

Bought a new lnb gonna change it tomorrow see what happen. Tech told me he thinks my problem may be that either the lbn or the wire gets humidity, and this is making the UNO4K to detect bad values and degrade or completely cut the reception, until the wire is unplugged/plugged, and it stays in that loop until the humidity dissapear.

Will update after changing the lbn, any more suggestion is welcomed

 

[AlexWilMac]

Yes, as I said, LNB is the first suspect, the wire is the 2nd.
In case, even if these were not the real cause of your problem, is a good idea to replace them after some years. Obviously, the cross-trying would be the best procedure... but it's difficult to perform it

 

[blu8]

- check the part of the cable where the F-Stecker is connected.
The metal mesh must not touch the central part of the cable

- If it's not the cable, then the LNB 90%, the Tuner 10% the problem

 

[Alejandro Alvarez]

Hi,

It took me a bit to update because I wanted to be sure it is working fine. Like a week ago I replaced the LNB and the cable. The LNB was apparently fine, a lot of dust on it but visual inspecting it it looked good. The wire had a lot of sections peeled and the mesh was exposed, however havent seen any spot in which the mesh could touch the copper.

Now it seems to work as intended most of the time. Cant say always because it has happened some times that im watching an streaming with VLC and the audio stop working, but unlike the main problem it corrects just doing stop and play.

 

[AlexWilMac]

Streaming has nothing to do with satellite reception but it has to do with your LAN or WLAN performances, not to mention your PC, particularly if you run windows, where many adwares and malwares might affect its performances.
If satellite reception is now good, as it seems from your last post, you solved the main problem.

 

[a911]

Hi,

It took me a bit to update because I wanted to be sure it is working fine. Like a week ago I replaced the LNB and the cable. The LNB was apparently fine, a lot of dust on it but visual inspecting it it looked good. The wire had a lot of sections peeled and the mesh was exposed, however havent seen any spot in which the mesh could touch the copper.

Now it seems to work as intended most of the time. Cant say always because it has happened some times that im watching an streaming with VLC and the audio stop working, but unlike the main problem it corrects just doing stop and play.

lost of Audio of IPTV stream, usually from the providers server setting.