Hi,

I bought my In-laws (who live just out of Thames) an S8200 last week to replace their S7090 which after three trips back to DishTV they have given up on.

The S8200 has not restored their confidence in DishTV products.

I went to Thames on Saturday to hook it all up for them. I thought it would be pretty simple. When I installed the S7090 a couple of years (if that) ago, it was plug and play - it found all the channels and just worked.

The S8200 asked me to connect to WiFi, which I did, then it installed an update. All good, happy to do that.

Then, after the update, it didn't scan for channels or anything - just sat there saying no channels (obviously, it hadn't done a scan). I factory reset it from the menu, and it connected to WiFi again, and this time did a scan. It took a while, but found nothing.

Weird, I thought. I connected the S7090 back up and fired it up (it has HDD issues, but watching TV still goes). All channels working. Not the cable then.

Connected the S8200 back up, ensuring cables firmly attached (and I used the loop through cable from the S7090 as the one that comes with the S8200 is a push on cable (push on to F-Sockets??)). Did a satellite scan - nothing. changed LNB settings (from 11300 to 10750) nothing again. (Optus D1, 160E by the way).

I plugged the s7090 back in again. Checked the LNB settings in there, found that the LNB freq was 10742 (I don't know why). Plugged S8200 back in, changed LNB to 10742. Lo, it found 32 services, TV was working, all was good. Or, so I thought.

After setting up TVNZ on demand and showing them how cool it was (and it worked beautifully), I went back to LiveTV and thought I'd just check that all channels were working OK. Went from TV1, to TV2, no worries. TV2, to TV3 - got a message that no channel is found, check cable. Then it comes on after about 20 seconds. same going from the TV3 Mux back to the TVNZ one, or to the Kordia one.

At this point, frustration kicks in. I tell them I suspect either the DishTV unit is stuffed (as both their other satellite STBs are working without issue TV tuning wise), or the LNB on their dish is dying (possible, given that strange LNB Frequency). Note that the strength/Quality meter on the S7090 is 82% Strength, 100% quality, and on the S8200 it is S:67% Q:100%.

I brought the S8200 back home, where I have an unused Sky dish and tried to test it yesterday (dish was in use up till 3 weeks ago). It would not tune any channels at all. I tried with what I thought/think is a cable direct to the dish, but as it was hosing down yesterday, I did not go and check it, so to be fair, and before I return this unit, I will check the cable run tonight.

So, for anyone that read all of that - does it sound like a dodgy S8200? @joshhill96 - do you have any ideas? Is the reason that the S7090 had a strange LNB Freq a symptom of a dying LNB - I don't want to get the in-laws to spend money they don't need to to get it sorted.