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If that's the name of it. Yes. Pops out and looks like a normal dish. Otherwise the delay will continue.

Yep, that's the name of it. Too bad about the delay. Too bad it's not an option that can be disabled.

You want the complete sig loss?

Absolutely. It only takes a second or two for the dome to find the correct satellite. It always gets to the HD channel unless the receiver decides to settle for the SD channel. It does the opposite, too. If I try to tune an SD station, it sometimes gives up and tries for the HD channel.

The point about 129 being farther west is a good one to remember to those who are farther from the west coast. As a sub on the west coast, I can say that 129 is very reliable and rarely has signal points less or much less than any of the other WA satellites. However, I do notice the loss of an HD or few HD channels that cause a switch to the SD channels, more often in the wee hours, ON OCASSION. On such occasions, the signal strength is fine,even quite strong. I believe Dish is tweaking with 129 to cram more channels (in fact, that was often what appeared a few days later) in and other experimentation. They can only add more HD to 110 and 129, as they have already, before they just can't anymore, and it becomes a game of cramming more at 129.

Also, Dish is really cramped for HD space, they may be running several transponders at 129 to the acceptable limit of FEC vs. power to cram in even more HD channels--not in the clear--and learning by experimentation the limits at the expense of the channels that are in the clear. This results NOT necessarily in a drop of the RF signal, but rather the loss of the packets, and a switch to SD for a very short period. Often I can re-tune to HD in less than a minute. Is an engineer tweaking about, and then notices the drop of picture, and then compensating to regain reception of the necessary packets in less than a minute? Hmmmm. I wonder? If Dish is going to cram more data on the already burdened transponders, then it means an adjustment in both FEC and power, and finding the right balance is not all just mathematical, but adjustments made by observing real-world effects.

Related to the above paragraph is my personal observation that the HD channels lately seem to suffer from a lack of luminance data. This is another trick to create more room for more channels on a xpndr. Dish blacks used to look really black and without "noise" distortion. For the last month or so, I have noticed that that black on the HD's is crushed rather badly, to the point that what should be black or a shadow in the foreground, simply lacks the data for display and the dark background is riddled with MPEG noise. This was NOT the case just a few months ago. In fact, one of the main reasons I would tout the Dish PQ quality was that it did NOT cheat on the luminance data to a point that it was detrimental. Now, is Dish cheating on Chromanace data, as well (as it so mercilessly does with the SD channels)? I can't tell by looking at it today, but I would not be surprised to see that go next. Of course, the audio is already provided less data, mostly on the non-premium channels. These are all places that any of the MVPD's go to reduce data without adding more compression to the overall picture, but to the elements, so the "crispness" of the PQ can be preserved. Yes, we can still see the wrinkles and the detail and patterns, but that black is just crushed and the sound isn't quite what it was, not too shabby, but still . . .

Well, I hope when the WA goes all 8PSK, we can see the return of black, at the very least. Although, I've gotten the notion from some at Dish that Dish may be going for all MPEG4 at the WA. I don't know if that is true, and AFAIK, Dish has only officially stated a change to all 8PSK at the WA. I've come across a few people who have had their recently changed out 8PSK boxes taken away and replaced with all MPEG4 equipment, unnecessarily, one would think, if Dish were going to change to 8PSK on the WA and NOT MPEG4. Let me know if Dish has OFFICIALLY stated an MPEG4 change for the WA.