I have mentioned this before in either this forum or one of the other main forums on the net !
If you have tried reflashing and rescans etc and still have the same problem, YOU NEED TO FIT A BOOSTER ! to increase the signal level, the signal the box is receiving is too weak and is stopping the tuner from picking all the channels up it should be.
For some reason virgin must have reduced the signal power going out just very slightly, wouldnt even make any difference to a normal subscribed virgin tv box as they have really tolerant tuners (and thier modems are tolerant too), but the original dreambox 500c has one of the weakest tuners in any receiver, and therefore, weak signal = not picking all channels up.
I can only guess that virgin thought to themselves "how can we really piss off all the dreambox owners", and this was the answer, the dummies took long enough to work that out, , yearssssssssssss.
The reason why this took most of us by surprise is because it happened to nearly everyone with the 500c, so we all thought its just virgin playing funny buggers, which they were, but we didnt think about them reducing the signal level ever so slightly nationwide, and that fraction of a drop in signal was enough to do what its doing now and has been for months.
I have 2 boosterS, i used to use them in an old property i have that had signal issues and they worked a treat, but in the other property i didnt have a signal issue until this happened months ago, but i still didnt run to plug in the booster as i simply couldnt be botherd as most of the channels i needed were still there, but then things changed a bit again the other day and i lost one or two channels that i did need, and thats when i brought out the good old booster and blew the dust off it, .
For anyone wondering, i have tried this several times this evening, erasing the flash on box, then reflashing the image and doing bruteforce scan, and it pulls in every channel every time, so this is a defo tried n tested fix I'm glad to say
This is the booster i have here >>>
Hidden Content 7Ccat:Accessories
As you can see thats a 4 way booster, you dont need a 4 way, just a single output is fine for one box, and you need to make sure the booster has a gain control on it so that you can adjust the power level, turn it up full is too strong, down full is turning it off, i have mines set about 3/4 of the way up, but you would need to fiddle with yours and watch the stream info on screen, pick a channel thats working good, get the stream info on screen, keep turning the gain control upwards and get the SNR level to round about 94-95%, and the BER needs to be sitting solid at 0, if the ber is all over the place then youve turned it up too high.
This will undoubtably helps loads of people, I dont need any praise as this is all old stuff to me that i just wish i would have made clear earlier, i think i did post a message in here about this like i said, cant remember though and i aint going looking for it. .
Anyway, have fun guys, and enjoy whats left of the time you have with "ALL" your channels back
reflash the box, stick the booster on making sure you previously set the level of gain, then do bruteforce scan.
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