Well, I've been semi-sucessfully using the
Mercury for the last few days. It's been sort of working on both my Primesar fixed dish and the 90CM/SG2100/QPH-031 , and switching through a 4x1
DiseqC switch has been working.
HOWEVER, from time to time, I'll lose reception. Ie I've been keeping it on the AMC3 12180V/30000 transponder. It will work fine with a strong signal for hours, but usually, after several hours it will suddenly lose signal, and it will NOT come back on it's own. To get signal back, all I had to do was switch to a horizontal polarity channel, then immediately back to the vertical transponder, and reception would be back, and would last again for several hours. But this made it difficult to schedule recordings much into the future obviously.
ANYWAY, due to people in the other thread saying that the version 1.53 firmware correcting other problems, I decided to try that version, and see if it would help MY problem.
So I backed up the channel info, and loaded in ver 1.53, then reset to factory conditions, and recovered my channels.
NOW, while I still receive the horizontal channels fine, I cannot get the vertical channels at all. Ie, switch to a horizontal channel, and back to vertical, and now the vertical transponders no longer come in. I've gone back and forth many times, but I can't get the vertical transponders back.
I hooked up my old Fortec Lifetime, and both polarities work fine with it.
I haven't done much trouble-shooting yet, but I'm starting to suspect that the Mercury might not be putting out enough lnbf voltage.
I checked the lnbf voltage at the receiver using my Channel Master signal meter, which has an LNBF voltage meter, and the Lifetime is putting out 20V on horizontal, and 14V on vertical.
I then re-connected my Mercury, again through my Channel Master meter, and NOW I'm receiving the vertical channels again, and the Mercury is putting out 14.5V on vertical, and 19.5V on horizontal.
What I started to suspect was that perhaps the 14.5V might actually be too much voltage, and my lnbf was switching over to horizontal. So to check this out, I connected my Lifetime to the pass-thru of the Mercury, took the Channel Master out of the circuit and connected the Mercury directly to the dish coax again, put the lifetime on a horizontal channel, and tuned the Mercury to a vertical transponder........ NOTHING, on either receiver. Ie it is NOT that the LNBF is in the wrong polarity, because the Lifetime now doesn't see anything on either polarity coming from the Mercury.
So WHY does the Mercury now work when going through the signal meter, but does NOT work when connected directly to the dish coax???
The only things that seem possible, are that :
(1) somehow something is causing the Mercury to completely shut down when connected directly to the dish coax, or:
(2) for some reason when connected directly, it is sending out distorted DiseqC commands to the switch, which is causing the switch to connect one of my other 3 lnbs (ie the circular port on 1, an un-used
C-band lnb on 3, or my Primestar lnbf on 4, instead of my linear
QPH031 port on 2).
Re (1), I can't think of ANY reason why the Mercury would shut down when on the low voltage polarity, so (1) doesn't really sound likely, unless there is something really weird about the firmware... but the firmware is definately involved here, because when I changed from 1.33 to 1.53, it stopped working.
Re (2), this sounds possible, but the only way I can prove or disprove this is to figure out which port switch I'm actually on. Perhaps I'll go out to the dish, and connect my meter to port 1 on the DiseqC switch, to see if it is getting power.
Anyway, this is all very strange.
ADDITIONAL INFO:
I was just about to go out and check voltages, and put my TV back onto the Mercury source, and NOW the Mercury is working again on vertical, even though I had been trying for the past 20 minutes to get it to work. The only thing I had done since the last time I checked, was to switch my Lifetime from horizontal to vertical, and back to horizontal. Just to check, I just switched the Mercury to horizontal (works) and back to vertical, and now it doesn't work again. This is all VERY WEIRD. It's possible that it is related to my DiseqC switch, but why is the Lifetime able to control it, and the Mercury with 1.33 firmware able to usually control it, but the Mercury with 1.53 can't??? WEIRD.
EDIT: More info. Just took my meter out to the dish. And sure enough, the DiseqC switch is actually on the #1 port, which is where I have the circular port attached. Not sure what's causing all of this, but I"m tempted to revert back to the 1.33 firmware, and switch the #1 and #2 ports on my switch, because 99% of the time I'm using the linear port anyway. Although I guess this means I'll have to change all the settings in 3 different receivers. But I think I may just slave the Mercury off the Lifetime for a while, in hopes that Fortec might come out with a new firmware version that fixes all this.