Why I am happy to have Dish

[ncted]

This also applies to Directv. We had about a foot of snow here on Wednesday. That evening, we lost Internet. The people who have tv and Internet from the same provider, whether AT&T or Spectrum as both are down, have neither service. The OTT customers are similarly screwed. At least I can still watch tv. Posting this from my phone sucks.

 

[JSheridan]

This also applies to Directv. We had about a foot of snow here on Wednesday. That evening, we lost Internet. The people who have tv and Internet from the same provider, whether AT&T or Spectrum as both are down, have neither service. The OTT customers are similarly screwed. At least I can still watch tv. Posting this from my phone sucks.

The last major outage around here I just fired up the generator and got TV and ViaSat and HughesNet internet going right away. Power was out for nearly a week.

 

[HipKat]

The last major outage around here I just fired up the generator and got TV and ViaSat and HughesNet internet going right away. Power was out for nearly a week.

Where do you live, Houston??

 

[JSheridan]

Where do you live, Houston??

No, a much colder and snowier place.

 

[comfortably_numb]

We’ve had some significant ice and snow here since Christmas, as well as below zero temps almost every night, and never lost signal on Dish once. Very dependable. As far as internet- if my DSL goes down, I fire up the hotspot on my phone. I’ve got all my PC’s and Dish equipment on UPS which will keep me running for a couple hours. Hopefully I won’t be down for a week any time soon!

 

[JSheridan]

We’ve had some significant ice and snow here since Christmas, as well as below zero temps almost every night, and never lost signal on Dish once. Very dependable. As far as internet- if my DSL goes down, I fire up the hotspot on my phone. I’ve got all my PC’s and Dish equipment on UPS which will keep me running for a couple hours. Hopefully I won’t be down for a week any time soon!

We've got DSL but that goes down all too often so the satellite internet from the office is the back-up and second back-up. Phone service is too spotty for a hot spot.

UPS's keep everything going until I get the generator running and connected.

 

[comfortably_numb]

We've got DSL but that goes down all too often so the satellite internet from the office is the back-up and second back-up. Phone service is too spotty for a hot spot.

UPS's keep everything going until I get the generator running and connected.

Sounds like you have good redundancy. Like I tell people, “it’s the price you pay to live in paradise” haha

 

[HipKat]

We’ve had some significant ice and snow here since Christmas, as well as below zero temps almost every night, and never lost signal on Dish once. Very dependable. As far as internet- if my DSL goes down, I fire up the hotspot on my phone. I’ve got all my PC’s and Dish equipment on UPS which will keep me running for a couple hours. Hopefully I won’t be down for a week any time soon!

Same here. Ice, snow, frigid, sub zero temps.. no probs!

 

[salyavin]

Well I have lost signal in snow several times where I had to go out and brush the snow off the disk to get my TV back. Not this year but previous years.

 

[salyavin]

A reason I am happy with Dish came up recently. I am building a new house and we have centurylink fibre there. I looked at PRISM TV from centurylink. I looked at their app and found some things you cannot watch outside your house, some you cannot watch live, and you can watch nothing abroad. With Dish I was in asia for about 6 weeks and watched dish anywhere just fine no problems. With PRISM I'd have to go back to torrents or the like as even a proxy server would not be good enough as you can't even watch everything on your home network.

 

[NYDutch]

Our upstate NY cottage just had another 6-8" of snow dropped on it, but I can't tell how much stayed on the dish. I can still stream from the Hopper though down here in FL, so it must not be much. What's neat though, is that our current service address is in the Jacksonville, FL DMA where the locals are on a 77 CONUS feed as well as a 61.5 spot beam, so our Hopper in NY is getting the Jacksonville locals now.

 

[Kirk1233]

DishAnywhere and the Hopper 3 is where the true Dish advantage is. We got Dish last winter and anytime there was ice or snow we lost TV until it got above freezing. Had our favorite Dish contractor out to install a dish heater and no issues in a much colder winter this year! (Never had that issue with DirecTV)

 

[Claude Greiner]

Generally I don’t see very much snow sticking on dishes with any provider.

However with the perfect conditions I have seen issues with ice and snow sticking to the dish.

Worst scenarios are customers who we installed the day before, get this type of storm. We end up going out to clear the snow and ice to keep everything good for the new customer.

Only for new connects, I don’t clear the snow for everyone.

 

[salyavin]

I've had it stick now and then, I would not be surprised to see it happen tomorrow. Not the end of the world, I can clear it off. If I was abroad I may be a bit annoyed at missed recordings. Most of the time it is not enough to drop signal as you indicate but periodically I will lose signal entirely albeit only a few times a year. I have never used DirectTV but have a hard time imagining their dishes being any different unless it is something to do with the position the dish was installed and pointed. I am pleased with the DVR (hopper) and dish anywhere and how it works well regardless of my location so I will not be going to PRISM that is for sure. DirectTV does not have the international channels I require so not even on my radar.

 

[HipKat]

The only time I've had it stick on mine was that late season, really wet and heavy snow, or widow maker snow, as we called it back in Buffalo

 

[EarDemon]

It can go either way.

In November of 2014, when a band of lake effect snow dropped 70+ inches or so in a 4 day span in the Western NY area, satellite dishes did not fair well, especially roof mounted ones. The overnight snow was so heavy and intense it caused both of my DirecTV dishes and my old not in use Dish Network dishes to essentially collapse from their weight of the snow. There was no brushing this snow off, even if you could get outside (try walking though 3 feet of snow after day 1), with the near zero visibility you couldn't even see the dishes and with the weight, there no way you could bush any amount of snow off. Best case would be to knock a chunk off that would just fall on you anyway. It took a week to get a DirecTV tech out to re-aim them, and when the tech was here he said that about the only jobs he's had since the driving bans were lifted were re-aiming dishes.

I did also however lose my cable connection, but it was pretty much just me. While I don't have any immediate neighbors (God Bless rural living!), the houses close to me that have cable did not loose it. Why was I lucky? My cable line comes off from the tap and then is secured down the utility pole that sits in a ditch. After a few days, when viability was finally decent enough that the snow plows could safely go out, when one came by, the weight of the snow being thrown off the road into the ditch tore the cable line in two. I called my friend who is a manager at Time Warner, now Charter and the next day he had a crew out here to do what they could to get me back up and running, and then came back the following week when the snow was all melted to do the job right.

I'm about as backed up as I can be. TV, Internet and Phone from Charter, with TV and Internet from DirecTV and HughesNet. The cable and satellite modems are on two separate APC 1500 Pro UPS units, along with my router, wireless access point, smart switch and NAS. Cell phones are unless in my neck of the woods. I used to have Sprint, and had a mobile hotspot with them, while I had no service in most of the house, if I went outside or placed it in a north facing window with I would get a small sliver of LTE, enough to get by. A few months ago I switched to T-Mobile which has no service for a few miles in away direction from me. The only way I can use voice at home with T-Mobile is wifi calling and texting, both of which are flaky, not reliable and suck. It's barley usable when I'm on Spectrum, and not usable at all on HughesNet. Getting a T-Mobile femtocell would do no good in the event of a cable outage, a repeater is out of the question, since there's no signal to repeat. I'm either going to go back to Sprint, or look at HughesNet Voice. Since as of right now, if cable goes out, I have no phone service period.

 

[NYDutch]

I wonder how the Dish eastern arc dishes fared in the recent southeast snow/ice storm. With elevations in the 48-50 degree neighborhood, I'd think there may have been some significant buildup on them.

 

[thomasjk]

I had enough build up to lose 72 but not 61.5. I was able to knock enough snow off to get back 72. My dish is roof mounted but I was able to rig up brush to remove enough snow to bring back 72. The snow was very light and fluffy unlike what we usually get. I'm in Charlotte NC.

 

[HipKat]

It can go either way.

In November of 2014, when a band of lake effect snow dropped 70+ inches or so in a 4 day span in the Western NY area, satellite dishes did not fair well, especially roof mounted ones. The overnight snow was so heavy and intense it caused both of my DirecTV dishes and my old not in use Dish Network dishes to essentially collapse from their weight of the snow. There was no brushing this snow off, even if you could get outside (try walking though 3 feet of snow after day 1), with the near zero visibility you couldn't even see the dishes and with the weight, there no way you could bush any amount of snow off. Best case would be to knock a chunk off that would just fall on you anyway. It took a week to get a DirecTV tech out to re-aim them, and when the tech was here he said that about the only jobs he's had since the driving bans were lifted were re-aiming dishes.

I did also however lose my cable connection, but it was pretty much just me. While I don't have any immediate neighbors (God Bless rural living!), the houses close to me that have cable did not loose it. Why was I lucky? My cable line comes off from the tap and then is secured down the utility pole that sits in a ditch. After a few days, when viability was finally decent enough that the snow plows could safely go out, when one came by, the weight of the snow being thrown off the road into the ditch tore the cable line in two. I called my friend who is a manager at Time Warner, now Charter and the next day he had a crew out here to do what they could to get me back up and running, and then came back the following week when the snow was all melted to do the job right.

I'm about as backed up as I can be. TV, Internet and Phone from Charter, with TV and Internet from DirecTV and HughesNet. The cable and satellite modems are on two separate APC 1500 Pro UPS units, along with my router, wireless access point, smart switch and NAS. Cell phones are unless in my neck of the woods. I used to have Sprint, and had a mobile hotspot with them, while I had no service in most of the house, if I went outside or placed it in a north facing window with I would get a small sliver of LTE, enough to get by. A few months ago I switched to T-Mobile which has no service for a few miles in away direction from me. The only way I can use voice at home with T-Mobile is wifi calling and texting, both of which are flaky, not reliable and suck. It's barley usable when I'm on Spectrum, and not usable at all on HughesNet. Getting a T-Mobile femtocell would do no good in the event of a cable outage, a repeater is out of the question, since there's no signal to repeat. I'm either going to go back to Sprint, or look at HughesNet Voice. Since as of right now, if cable goes out, I have no phone service period.

Hello fellow WNY'er!!!!

 

[ncted]

I had to clean off my dish twice during the heavy, wet snow last Wednesday, but that is unusual.