Here's one for you:
A few weeks ago I got a call from one of my stations. His Unity 4000 was muted
on all four audio channels and the front panel said "Warning: Audio Program
N/A" as we have occasionally seen when somebody's T1 dies while you're tuned
to their channel.
This had happened between noon and 12:30--he had used SRN news (from MBN) at
11:55 but it was gone by 12:30 headline time. Because he's 80 miles away, we
did some troubleshooting by phone. We found all 4 channels with the status
"CMD" which I believe is a mute issued through the COMPEL stream.
We tried switching the receiver manually with SatSked, but what we found was
that we got a message declaring that "Local control must be enabled" to
process the command. We found that message by watching the terminal screen in
SatSked after issuing a SETAUDIO command. I presume the local control was
disabled in the same command stream as the mutes.
I called Moody Satellite Control, and Tom re-enabled local control for us via
his COMPEL stream. Actually I asked him to do a COMPEL reset since this often
clears up funny problems of this kind. We set the audio ports to where they
belonged, and we were back in business.
Until midnight, that is. The same thing happened at midnight, so all his
recordings were flatlines and he had no satellite during the night.
Unfortunately we didn't know this until morning, but that's another issue.
I buzzed down there with my spare receiver and got him back in business
permanently, and brought the funny receiver back to HQ with me for later
troubleshooting. Finally I got to it a few days ago, after the Sharathon rush
was over. I made a couple of phone calls to people with some knowledge of
COMPEL who suggested that perhaps my problem had something to do with SRN
since they do a lot of COMPEL switching.
My working theory was that the receiver's serial number had been inadvertently
keyed into the COMPEL database of some network that was restricting receivers
for some reason--I wondered if perhaps it had been a network using video but
not audio or something like that. Anyway Derek at SRN was very helpful in
working with me to ensure that we were *not* in any groups with SRN, and I
also checked with SkyLight and Moody during the process, too, to ensure that
we were NOT in any COMPEL groups that we shouldn't be.
Derek issued a COMPEL command that flushed any group information that might be
cached in the receiver, and I reset the thing yet again. Apparently that was
the needed fix, because the receiver has been working normally for the last
few days since. Normally we keep this receiver on the shelf, or in the rack
but not plugged in, so if we have a lightning disaster perhaps we could get
back on the air with MBN using the spare receiver. So this morning I
disconnected the second receiver again for safety and I'm declaring the
problem is solved.
All this to say--if you haven't had any of these "unexplainable" problems with
your receivers, consider yourself fortunate. I've had two receivers in
particular that have had more than their share of funny anomalies not
connected with the usual interference issues or overload problems that are so
common. In both cases, they would get strange command mutes--one receiver used
to get muted occasionally on various channels, like port two left, port 3
right, port 4 left and right, or something similar. In each case it required
the help of a COMPEL headend to get us running again. So the lesson is: When
weird things happen to your Unity 4000, make sure you call your network
provider to see if they can help clear things up.
It's also really nice to have a spare receiver. This one is my backup for four
stations, and I've used it least once a year since I've been here, usually more.
Fred Gleason -- could you forward this to Derek so he knows what the final
outcome was? He asked if I could keep him informed but I forgot to get his
address. Thanks.
Mark
MN
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