# Direct TV Receiver keeps dying



## chenley (Feb 20, 2007)

Was called out to a job today where the client is on their third Direct TV receiver. Direct TV worker came out yesterday and told the client that he was reading 17V on ground. Told the client to call an electrician to fix the ground problem and not to hook the new receiver up until it was fixed.

I didn't measure any voltage at all to the ground rod, figure the tech was seeing phantom voltage. Found that the coax splitter from the dish was not grounded so I grounded that. The client has a surge protector that the receivers were plugged into and showed me with the previous "dead" receiver that when he plugged it in that the ground light would come on. I pulled the receptacle and found that the ground wire was not even attached to the receptacle so I connected that, plugged the surge protector back in and the ground light would come on by itself. 

Question is: With the ground light coming on plugging the receiver in without the ground connected at the receptacle, was the surge protector sensing the ground through the cable line through the receiver to the ground rod? 

I went ahead and had the client plug in his receiver, since everything I could test tested good and could not find any other problems with the installation.


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## GregS (May 22, 2007)

Don't sat receivers send 17v down the coax in order to power the LNBs and switch?


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## tjmi (Mar 21, 2011)

yes they do DC component


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## guest (Feb 21, 2009)

chenley said:


> Was called out to a job today where the client is on their third Direct TV receiver. Direct TV worker came out yesterday and told the client that he was reading 17V on ground. Told the client to call an electrician to fix the ground problem and not to hook the new receiver up until it was fixed.
> 
> I didn't measure any voltage at all to the ground rod, figure the tech was seeing phantom voltage. Found that the coax splitter from the dish was not grounded so I grounded that. The client has a surge protector that the receivers were plugged into and showed me with the previous "dead" receiver _*that when he plugged it in that the ground light would come on. I pulled the receptacle and found that the ground wire was not even attached to the receptacle so I connected that, plugged the surge protector back in and the ground light would come on by itself. *_
> 
> ...


By fixing the ground wire I am sure you solved the problem.

Before the ground wire was connected, the surge protector and its indicators were feeding voltage to the receiver's ground connection which is what was frying the receivers. (Remember that most surge protectors have MOV's connected between hot and ground and neutral and ground, so any surges they were diverting were being sent through the receiver. oops.)


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## kingofku (Apr 26, 2011)

What is the voltage reading between neutral and ground?


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## johnsmithabe (May 3, 2011)

will it needs to read the voltage for ground and neutral.
I think it may varies depends on current flow.


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