metro Detroit rain fade today?

[TheTimm]

Did anyone else out there have any picture issues/losses today, perhaps due to the rain? I had some big-time troubles. Lost all signal completely for an hour or so, and for a large portion of the day the picture was pixelating and the sound was dropping in and out. Kept calling customer service, they kept having me reboot the receiver, which seemed to do very little, if anything. Everything seems much better now that the rain seems to have moved out. If that's all the rain it takes to have problems, satellite t.v. may not be for me afterall. It wasn't a very pleasant way to spend a day.

 

[Bruce]

Get the bigger dish.
Now I do not have Voom(I tried and had two major install problems)but I also live in the Metro Detroit Area and never had any rain fade with Dish Network ever(in the 5 years I have had E*)and I have a 18" dish pointed at 61.5 for when they had HD there and a regular Dish 500 pointed at 110 and 119,is the Voom bird less power is it the STB or what and I do not want to start a flame war about V* vs E* vs D* just wondering about the rain fade problem.

 

[TheTimm]

I don't know if Voom has less power than Dish or Direct -- I've never had either. And I've only had Voom for about a week, so I didn't know if the problems I had today were par for the course or not. Good to know they're not. The CSR's I spoke with didn't say anything about a bigger dish. Nothing they said really made any sense. One guy kept saying that it's because I've only had the Voom for a week and the STB is still downloading information and the problem should just clear up on its own. Yeah, that sounds right. The best he could do was to have a tech who's coming out to upgrade my OTA antenna in a couple weeks re-peak the dish. Who knows, maybe it'll help.

 

[Bruce]

If you research the forum you will see what most people do is get the 30" dish and that handles the rain fade problem,to get Voom to do so I guess is another problem.....sorry.

 

[rollerfink]

I'm in Detroit and I used to get terrible rain (or cloud) fade with the regular size dish. I got upgraded to the 30" dish and now everything is good. I wasn't watching my TV until tonight but no rain fade here.

If you notice it continuing I'd post a message to Wilt in the Yahoo forum or PM Sean Mota and see if he has a new Installs Inc contact since Joe Harkins left.

I guess we're all supposed to get bigger dishes in a few months anyway so you could wait if it's not too bad.

What are your satellite power and quality numbers? If your quality isn't in the 90's then it could be a problem. Of course re-peaking might help too (but it didn't help for me).

 

[TheTimm]

Signal quality is usually in the 70's - signal power in the 60's or 70's. Voom folks told me that that was fine - a strong signal. Not so? I guess I'll just keep an eye on it until the dish gets repeaked and see if that helps. Something needs to be done if it's gonna cut out from just the dreariness of yesterday. The Voom folks kept saying that it's just the nature of satellite service that weather affects the quality -- and I understand that, but we're not exactly talking about heavy storms here, just a gray day with a bit of rain.

 

[rollerfink]

It's not the nature of satellite service because people with Dish and DirecTV don't get the significant rain fade problems that I was getting before they gave me a bigger dish.

And signal quality in the 70s is going to be a problem for you I guarantee it. I used to get around 80 (sometimes upper 70s) but if it ever dipped into the low 70s it would cause signal drops. I bet you'll see a lot more fade with those numbers. The re-peak might work for you though -- that could be the problem.

Now I get signal quality of 97-98 with the bigger dish (it's pretty huge though).

I think at some point they are planning to migrate all voomers to a bigger dish due to additional satellite space they will be getting. That should fix it but I don't know when that is supposed to happen.

 

[rollerfink]

P.S. I think the new software (which hopefully will be here very soon) actually tells you what kind of signal level you need to lock in and to avoid rain fade. I think they say either 80 or 85 to avoid rain fade so those CSRs are B.S.ing you if they told you 70's is a strong signal.

 

[jtruong]

I'm in the Detroit area too and all satellite channels went out when that huge storm came through. I was able to get the OTA channels fine. Once the storm cleared (after about 10 - 15 minutes) the satellite channels came back fine. No picture or sound issues. Oh, and I've got the 18" dish. Personally, I don't mind too much that the satellite channels go out when a bad storm goes through, but if the bigger dish fixes this problem then all the better.

John