effects of weather on satellite reception

[smakovits]

I have been pondering the idea of satellite for some time, but there are still two things holding me back. I am located in Independence/Broadview Heights in Ohio.

My first concern is my HD coverage. I love my HD local channels and I am going to be stuck using an off air antenna...I am afraid I am going to have an eye sore in the middle of my room with an an antenna there to pick up my hd local channels. What kind of success can I have if I use one of those add ons to a direct tv satellite or if I try to hide an antenna in say a back room or attick?

My second concern is disruption due to weather. I always hear that this is what hinders the quality of satellite. Being in northeast ohio can I expect any major interruption due to light to heavy snow fall. Also, how would rain and storms effect reception. I would become angree if I was in the middle of watching something and my picture constantly broke up due to loss of signal.

I am not sure if this is the right place for this post, so i apologize if it is not, but I am really trying to figure out if the switch would be worth it. And if I did, then I have to decide if I want the free hd dvr from dish, or is i want the big ten network from direct tv, which is truly better, or is this a battle that has no real winner. thanks for any and all insight in my pursuit of happiness and possible switch to satellite from my crappy COX cable service which I currently am stuck with as it is my only other option

 

[Hall]

What kind of success can I have if I use one of those add ons to a direct tv satellite or if I try to hide an antenna in say a back room or attick?

Those clip-on antennas will point in the same direction as your dish, which will be south-southwest. Are your local TV station's towers in that direction also ?? Antennas can be mounted in a variety of locations, including the "back room", the attic, even set-top antennas can work. Go to AntennaWeb, put in your address information, and post the list of stations here.

I would become angree if I was in the middle of watching something and my picture constantly broke up due to loss of signal.

It WILL happen. How often depends on many, many factors. Most often it's due to a dish that's not aimed as well as possible and can be improved.

 

[rad]

I lived in the Chicago area for a loooooong time and the only real issue I had with signal loss was when we got a heavy/wet snow that collected on the dish and/or the LNB heads. For that reason, if possible, I'd go with a ground mount so if that does occur you just go outside and wipe the snow off, or get a dish heater.

Now down in Texas and we've had some killer rain storms this year, I'm talking like with 1in in 20 minutes. With that kind of rain fall yep I lost the signal but it came back fairly quickly.

Now with that side, cable can and does have outages. The biggest difference there is that usually they need to identify the location of the problem and then send a repair crew out to fix the fault, which can take hours or days.

 

[jokeworm]

My total time loss from outages have been less with satellite than they ever were with cable. Here in Oklahoma we have a few pretty strong storms pass through ... I only really drop signal when the storm is severe enough for the local guys to cut into programming .. at which point I'm generally watching the local guys anyway just to make sure that there are no tornado's hidden in there anywhere.

As was said earlier .. when the signal goes out - it generally lasts 3-5 mins tops for me. The snowfall will probably knock it out for a longer period .. but there are ways to avoid build-up on the dish that can help. With cable i had fewer outages .. but when it did go out it lasted anywhere form an hour to 5, 6 hours or more on some occasions. .. so total time loss was always higher for me with cable.