Larger dish to face huge test this evening.

[bradley]

Thanks for the feedback... I hope it takes care of the drops and pixing. Here's the bizzar part: I have a solid 91-92.

I had a service call for a dish upgrade (072904). The installer showed up w/o a dish! When they called the day before to confirm the install I asked them to confirm they were installing a new 30” dish; they confirmed.

They installed a new STB and said that should do the trick. Still dropping and pixing.

Schmucks!!!

Drops and pixing becoming more prevalent in the evening; it has become more of an issue since v1.10, 6.10.

 

[T2k]

WHen it's raining here, my program is unacceptable, nothing but artifacted freezes - should I ask for upgrade?

 

[rkr0923]

how does a bigger dish improve OTA?

 

[bradley]

It doesn't.

 

[polargrowler]

Rain fade makes me worry about snow.....

I'm in the northeast - rain all weekend, so I have no Voom. I'm in a remote area, and probably will be among the last for any upgrades.......would it do me any good to call and complain? If I lose service in any rain, I'm afraid this winter will be pretty much a bust too once the snow starts........any suggestioins? Is the upgrade dish actually available now?

 

[007BlackMan]

I'm in the northeast also and it's raining as i'm writing 24" dish is doing just fine. Before i received upgrade dish anytime it rained i would lose service. I complained after reading what Voomers were saying on this forum about rain fade. I don't think snow is as much a problem as rain is? It took two weeks to have Installer come and install my upgrade 24" dish.

 

[CoachS]

I have a elliptical direcTV dish right now and was going to sell it once voom gets installed (next tues) but if it will work with the new voom and they dont give away the new dishes' I think it would be a good idea to hang onto it

and...

The Voom elliptical dish is going to be at least double or 2.5 the size of the DirecTV oval dish. The DirecTV oval dish is way, way too small. The Voom dish will be the size of a super dish almost.

This didn't really answer jagouar's question which would be mine, also, about whether a DirecTV oval dish would work at all with Voom. And I doubt Voom's will be twice the size of mine -- I have a 36" X 24" Gainmaster dish from Channel Master.
The question is can we former DirecTV people simply move the Voom LNB to the middle position of our existing oval dishes' brackets and have them work once we point them to the 61.5 sat. correctly? If so, I can't imagine we won't see our rain fade problems at least go down a little.

 

[bbtkd]

It doesn't.

Logic tells us this - but - when they upgraded me to a 28" dish, my OTA signal level increased substantially. The only explanation I could come up with is that my OTA antenna is near my dish and the dish is acting as a reflector. I watched the install and he did not touch the OTA antenna. Weird...

 

[slick1ru2]

I suppose this will start in about 2 weeks ;-)

Yeah, I told the guy that put my 24" dish replacement up last week I'd be seeing him again soon.

 

[polargrowler]

I'm in the northeast also and it's raining as i'm writing 24" dish is doing just fine. Before i received upgrade dish anytime it rained i would lose service. I complained after reading what Voomers were saying on this forum about rain fade. I don't think snow is as much a problem as rain is? It took two weeks to have Installer come and install my upgrade 24" dish.

Thanks for the info! I called today to ask for the upgrade to the 24" dish. The guy said as far as he knew, they only had one size dish, but he would schedule a service appointment. I held for a while, and he said the system was down, and someone from the installations team would call me within 10 days. I got a work order # so I can call back tomorrow to see if they are able to schedule it then. The guy from Voom was very nice, but didn't seem to be aware of anything (that he'd admit to, anyway!) about upgrade dishes...Guess I'll just have to wait and see. Getting tired of paying almost a bill a month for such unreliable service.......still, when it's good, it's very very good....

 

[jimmykce1]

I got upgraded to a 30inch dish and works great durining normal rain events.

 

[aarton]

I had emailed Wilt a while ago asking for help getting a bigger dish, if it even threatens to rain our signal goes from 97 or so to below 60 and if it does rain it goes as low as 20. He mailed back right away saying he's see what he could do, a week or so later we got an email from Installs Inc saying to call the installer for an appointment and of course they had no idea what we were talking about.
They kept brining up OTA. Said they never heard of a bigger dish and if they did anything like that we'd have to pay. He's going to look into it more and call back.

 

[jimmykce1]

Try to get a 30 incher..

 

[aarton]

I'll try, but we won't hear back from them.. It was pretty hard to get an install around here, it took months and the guy had to come back a few times. They don't seem too interested in installing voom and they're the only installers near here besides some goofs that came once and said it wouldn't be done and left. Those people didn't even bring a latter.

 

[shelly]

Quite a awhile ago, Voom replaced my 18" dish with a 24" dish, but the weather had been perfect here in CA since that installation. Slight drizzles, back then with the 18"er, would result in no picture for hours at a time.

This morning, we have dense clouds with low cloud misting and my signal quality is 97, with power at 100/SN 16.61.

Not a real test for rain fade but very encouraging for the upcoming rainy season. Keeping fingers crossed.

Shelly

 

[007BlackMan]

You have signal power at 100/SN/16.61 that's very good with 24" dish? I have 24" dish too my signal quality 96 sometimes 97 with power at 71/75/SN 15.00 to 16.00.

 

[Technut]

First heavy rain today, since my 24 inch dish was installed, showed a little improvement during light rain, will a 30 inch dish be better, what about that cover will that really do any good? Directv lasted 25 min longer than voom during the rain. and i still have my locals up and running old sd way, Will any satillite provider be able to fix these problems in the future?

 

[Sean Mota]

Technut,

I doubt it. When T-Storms hit and the sky becomes black both my Dish and Voom go out. I don't like to have my expensive equipment on a heavy T-Storm so I turn everything off. Do not know if you have those. But typically this is when I lose the signals.

 

[bbtkd]

First heavy rain today, since my 24 inch dish was installed, showed a little improvement during light rain, will a 30 inch dish be better, what about that cover will that really do any good? Directv lasted 25 min longer than voom during the rain. and i still have my locals up and running old sd way, Will any satillite provider be able to fix these problems in the future?

Sure - if the only goal of the sat companies was to eliminate rain fade, they could launch satellites with more power but that would require larger and more expensive satellites, or fewer transponders. They are unlikely to do that just to eliminate rain fade. It's a matter of diminishing returns. If they can bump power 10% and decrease outages from .5% of the time to .1% that might be worthwhile, but if they had to bump power another 60% to reduce outages to .05% that would not seem to make sense since it would vastly increase costs.

For those experienceing rain fade, if you calculate how much time you are down per month I doubt it would be more than .5% in any area of the country. But - any outage is aggravating. At one time Voom management was quoted as acknowledging their power and outage issues (as compared to their competitors) and said they would be increasing their signal to reduce rain fade issues. I have a 28" dish (aka 30") and I still get rain fade that is unacceptable to me (though probably only .1% of the time). I had an 18" DirecTV dish and it had only about a tenth of the rain fade as compared to Voom.

 

[Technut]

First heavy rain today, since my 24 inch dish was installed, showed a little improvement during light rain, will a 30 inch dish be better, what about that cover will that really do any good? Directv lasted 25 min longer than voom during the rain. and i still have my locals up and running old sd way, Will any satillite provider be able to fix these problems in the future?

after the main rain downpour passed, VOOM was able to grab a signal very quickly, literaly after the rain stoped, with all the black storm clouds still above and sparatic lightning, the sat signal went back up to 97 almost immed. With the smaller dish i would lose signal in black cluds too. thiis new dish was a improvement.

Mr. C