Intermittent Pixelation and Sound Drops on Local Channels

[zeldar]

Hi,

I have been a Dish customer for many years. Of late, I am experiencing serious pixelation and sound dropouts. The problem is worst on the local channels. At times, the sound cuts off once a minute along with digital freeze and pixelation of the picture. Some shows are just plain frustrating to watch. I called DN tonight and got the typical line of 'could be poor signal level, bad cables, etc., etc. I have two receivers and they both do it. In addition, they are both cabled separately all the way from the dish. The LNB and switch were just replaced about 6 weeks ago as a result of the loss of several channels during periods of warm weather. I almost had to cancel my subscription to get them to send out a tech to replace the LNB. After they did, the channels that I was losing came back and now work fine, but this freezing and cutouts are very frustrating.

Anyone else seen an increase in dropouts and picture freezes over the past month or two?

I live in the foothills of the Sierra mountains east of Sacramento and the local channels in question are the Sacramento locals.

 

[TheKrell]

I looked this up so others don't have to: all Sacramento locals are coming off 2 transponders (18 and 20) on 110, spotbeam 43.

The fact that two receivers do the same thing argues for more LNB issues, or possibly that your dish needs peaking. What signal strentgth do you see on TP 18 and 20 on 110? Do you know what Dish dish you have? Do you know if the LNBs are DishPro? What receivers do you have, and how long are the cables to the dish? Are you talking SD or HD? If HD, do you use an OTA antenna for your locals?

 

[brian_tr]

My locals here in Sherman Tx have been getting very bad sound quility on my locals. It seems to switch channels from day to day. Sounds like a blown speaker. How they get this fixed pretty soon. When I called about it they said they are working on it. Been over a week. Also told me at the beginning of month I would be getting HD locals. Quess that isnt going to happen.

 

[MikeD-C05]

dishquality@echostar.com for all audio/video problems.

 

[dak32]

Sacto locals

I have had six calls in the Sacto area in the last three days with the same problems. Typically it is happening about three or four times an hour, mainly on locals. The signal strength is perfect, and it is happening on all receivers. It is even happening on new connects. I think that it is a transmission problem.

 

[kvnfl]

There was a thread on this subject about three weeks ago. It is a software problem Dish is working on.

 

[AVMe]

This has been an ongoing problem for me for months. The locals are the worst; they quiver/flash/pixelate every few seconds. Premium channels like HBO never have this problem.

Dish needs to fix this now or give us a huge discount on our bill.

 

[2001kx]

i get this as well with my hd locals.
seems to me the the fox hd is the worst one.

 

[bradfordj]

I live in Roseville (just north of Sacramento) and have received pixelation on Fox40-HD during prime time. I'm in the 60's on the 110.

 

[zeldar]

Dish Tech was here yesterday

What he said is that the problem is with the local channel digital uplinks. He stated that many of the locals have the same equipment and that it is not working well; that they along with the manufacturers of the equipment are working on fixing the problems. He checked out my receiver signal levels and said they were good. My dual-LNB is brand new; replaced a couple months ago after it started failing in hot weather.

One other item of note is that the sound and pixelation seems to be worse when the weather is hot. This weekend, I really have not had a problem, but the weather has been relatively cool, around 80 for the highs here. Last weekend it was around 100 and the problems were so bad I could hardly watch my locals. Time will tell. If it is heat related, it should get worse again later this week when it gets back to our normal miserable hot weather and bad air patterns here in the suckromento area ~I digress....

 

[gbjbany]

thanks for the update, i too had just been watching some dvr'd programs from the past couple of weeks and was thinking of calling dish or emailing to the dishquality email.
My issues had been on most channels and only as you say during prime time.

Here's teh avs forum that also tells the same story http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=397256&page=245