MY wife and I live next door to my parents and we share a near zero lot line.
Earlier in the year I upgraded my direct TV to two TIVO setups. They said I was free to keep my (2) two year old phillips tuners. Since a new multi-switch was installed I decided to keep them active for a small monthly increase and use them next door at my parents house. (They are elderly and I wanted to eliminate their 58 dollar cable bill). Suspecting this might be slightly illegal, I had the installer run two lines just inside my house. I later pulled them and ran two coax lines underground encased in pvc over to my parent's house.
I used compression fittings and all was well. Suddenly, after several months of clean signal, both of the phillips boxes are experiencing a signal drop from 96 to 0 for several seconds at intervals of every few minutes. My TIVO tuners are puring along undisturbed.
I feel it may be the multi-switch that is the culprit.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
Thanks,
Matt

Umm, yeah...you're an idiot.

Hey Jackass,...save your limited intellect for
Nickelodeon.com!

So you're a sat-pirating thief. I retract the Idiot classification. You're just cheap. Thank you for all the headaches you and your kind have caused our industry.

Sincerely,
Nicolas P. Appert

First of all, Nicolas, my parents are surviving on a fixed social security income of
$800.00 per month. Out of that, they have to pay $250 for medical.
I will cut what ever corner I must to provide a little financial relief to two people who mean so much to me. Any decent human being would.
I pay Direct TV the fee they request per month for two additional receivers (about $14.00) with completely Legal cards. I in no way attempt to reprogram them. I don’t see what I am doing as pirating since Direct TV is aware that the receivers exist and charge me for their use.
I simply extended the coax length another 75 feet. The fact is that the cable runs to a separate structure sharing a common property.
If I were to run a coax out to a subscribed receiver in my workshop is that piracy? After all, it is a separate, free standing structure.
Just about anyone living in a developed economy that feels the daily impact of over inflated pricing finds ways to cut a corner.

Bucka,

This could be several things.

The first thing to remember when troubleshooting what is wrong, Look for the easy stuff first. Unscrew the connections from the multiswitch and the offending DSS boxes. Look for loose strands of shield that may be shorting to the center conductor. It only takes one strand, so look closely using a bright light source.

If suspect the above to look ok, but it was something easy, and important to rule out. I suspect it is something that has affected both cables, so I doubt it's the multiswitch, but lets try to prove that next.

Take one of your connections, and unscrew it from the output of the multiswitch, and connect it to one of the outputs that is having trouble once run to your parents place. Try it for several hours. If you still have the problem, you have isolated the issue to the multiswitch. If you no longer have the problem, the output of the multiswitch is good, so the problem is either the cable or the DSS box you've moved.

I suspect if you ran the cables underground, they may be sitting in water inside the PVC pipe. If you didn't use coax rated for direct burial, the water can seep into the coax, and severely increase the loss, to the point that you have no signal. Bring one of the offending DSS boxes over, and hook it up to the multiswitch without using the underground cable. Or, you can run a cable outside above ground for this test. If the problem is fixed, you have bad cable runs. I suspect this may be the issue, as you say you have the same issue on both sets, and both cables are run underground. If so, buy cable rated for direct burial, and use the cable already run through the PVC to pull the new cables.

Let us know what you find. We should be able to figure this out for you. Sorry you got the flame treatment from the individual above, perhaps it was "That time of the month" for him ;-)

Too true, too true. My apologies Bucka, good luck with your problem. Peace.