Why does my DirecTV receiver keep turning off?

We are having trouble with our Directv DVR receiver. DVR doesn't record and it's always searching for signal.

• Does anyone know how to fix this problem?All day long, on most of our channels, we get this message: Searching for signal-771. But, our old basic receiver upstairs works fine, and always has a signal. Directv has been no help either. I was told to reset my box. The rep stayed on the phone with me and said that this will fix my problem. It did momentarily. While I was on the phone with him, my signal went out again. Then he says, after we had been on the phone for at least 10 minutes, "Well, it looks like your area is experiencing some outatges. Give it about 2 hours." That was a week ago. Their customer service has become too much of a hassle to keep calling back. Does anyone know how to fix this problem? Has anyone else had this problem?

• Answer:

  If you have only one cable connection to the back of your satellite receiver, you should be able to watch live TV with no issues. With the Directv model DVR it is necessary to have 2 coax cables connected to both satellite inputs on the back of the receiver. If recording is not an issue, it is a possibly the DVR, the cable itself, an in-line device, or a bad LNB is to blame. To troubleshoot the DVR you can swap the two receivers, if the problem persists with the DVR, it is bad. If the problem switches to the "old" receiver, the problem lies in the cabling or LNB.