I guess I'll post in here since my aunt is having a similar problem with her reception.
I don't have much information about her receiver or the dish she is using, but the reception is horrible. She lives in Torrance, Ca which is basically Los Angeles. Her dish has a single LNB. The receiver is really cheap. I don't know the brand but it's silver and about the size of a portable DVD player.
All she really wants to watch are the Iranian News channels but the picture is so scrabbled that it's impossible to watch. She says the signal was decent about a week ago and has now gotten worse. Her signal for the channel hovers around 20%.
What can she do to improve her signal? She is willing to buy all new equipment (i.e. dish, receiver) for around $200. Will a triple LNB dish work better?
Again, she is only concerned about getting channels like Iranian News Network.
Thanks.
First of all: welcome to the forum =).
If I'm not mistaken, the Iranian News Channel is
PressTV (part of my source for news, along Al-Jazeera in that same 97ºW satellite, France24 & Texas Cable at 121ºW, Milenio & TeleFórmula USA @ 116ºW, and Cadena3 & Imágen at 113ºW).
Since there have not been any violent prolonged wind gusts in the area, that i know of (after all LA, SD, and the northern part of Baja California usually experiment the same kind of weathers in those regions close to the sea), i think it might have been a poor alignment since the beginning that got worse with even the oh-so-slight move, which could be caused by a number of things.
The first thing would be to do a fine tunning.
I guess she has a 3ft antenna so going a bit bigger, 4ft for example will help her get more Q on that channel (the three LNB antenna wouldn't help her at all with that sat as most likely would be for dish or directv), since i get a marginal 30-40Q using a 3ft antenna, but in the 4ft antenna i get 60-70Q if peaked solely in that transponder (i'm about 5-6 hours south of LA, in Baja, so we have pretty much the same readings in most of the sats).
Cheers!
Mike