One small storm and out it goes!

Dish Network is the worst company I ever had to deal with, it goes down if someone spits and they been out 2x and checked the TV signal and said oh it's good enough and left charging me $15 and did absolutely nothing.
Tonight was the last straw, it's down 5 hours already and Dish Network said there is nothing they can do because their entire system is down, so what does that say about them?
Every month I fight about my bill because it's always wrong in their favor, last month $28 more then the month before and this month it's $31 more. I'm getting tired of having to call them and to me that's not good service and grounds to break my contract because they had 2X to fix it and did nothing.
 
I'm in NE Indiana and I lose signal in just about every rain storm, it's a short period but it is annoying. Until this thread I thought that was just part of using a dish, but I see that signal strength may be an issue.

I just checked mine and signal is 64%, is that good or bad?
 
I live in southeast Texas and we have our share of rainy weather. I have the 722k with dual ota tuners. We rarely lose our signal , unless it's raining hard ,like cats and dogs and sometimes sideways. When we do lose our sat signal we just switch over to an ota tuner and we're back in business. We record Abc shows on one ota tuner and Fox shows on the other ota tuner. So most of the time we are watching Abc shows anyway , we barely ever lose that signal. Now as far as satellite signal strength. I have my eastern arc sat dish , that I installed myself, peaked at the highest signals I can get, or that I read anyone gets with that 1000.4 dish: 72.7 sat - 60 - 70/ 77 sat - 45-50/ 61.5 sat - 50 -70. Most people can't even get 77 sat at those levels. DISH even went to a dual lnb for some eastern arc dish setups that don't need 77 sat for their locals. So peaking your dish to get maximum signal stengths is important, but so is having ota as a backup. But in the end ALL satellite fails at a certain rain strength, but comes back when the rains settles down to a steady slower rate. Unless you have a huge 1 meter sat dish, you will lose your signal if it rains really hard . Even when I had Directv it would lose signal as soon as the clouds gathered over head and Before the rain even started falling. With DISH it happens once the rain becomes strong and returns once the rain settles to a slower rate. It is part of doing business with satellite. Now if rain fade is such an issue for you , I suggest returning to cable or stick strictly with ota only , or get a huge sat dish that cuts rain fade to 0.
 
The higher the number the better the signal strength. If your signal strength is 64, that is not very good. You are very marginal to work during normal conditions, any rain, wind (trees), fog conditions will affect you.
 
64 is pretty good depending on what arc you're on

remember the dish meter is very miserly and high 50's low 60's on Eastern Arc is the norm
Western Arc you can get into the 70's
 
Well apparently I have alot to learn about Dish. Twelve years with DirecTv, will be switching in the week or two to Dish H/J system. A SS of 64 is usually not very good with DTV. I live about 40 miles north of Houston in a heavily wooded area. It is currently pouring down raining as I write this from my phone, we still have a Satelite signal. My SS is usually around 92-94. Had construction going on one time at the house and had to move the Satelite dish for a temporary spot for a while. The SS was a 86 in the new temp location, as the spring season approached and the trees started budding out, my SS went to 58-60. To say the least we lost signal on every spit of rain & 5 mph wind blowing the trees. The signal would freeze up in perfect sunning weather. We moved back to the original spot after construction, SS went back 92-94 and all is good again. I need to learn more about the Satelites and thier locations and the SS for my new Dish H/J system.
 
But in the end ALL satellite fails at a certain rain strength, but comes back when the rains settles down to a steady slower rate. Unless you have a huge 1 meter sat dish, you will lose your signal if it rains really hard . Even when I had Directv it would lose signal as soon as the clouds gathered over head and Before the rain even started falling. With DISH it happens once the rain becomes strong and returns once the rain settles to a slower rate. It is part of doing business with satellite. Now if rain fade is such an issue for you , I suggest returning to cable or stick strictly with ota only , or get a huge sat dish that cuts rain fade to 0.

It doesn't matter how big of a dish you get, you WILL lose signal if the clouds are thick enough. It's just the nature of the Ku band. DirecTV uses the Ka band as well as the Ku band. The Ka band is even more susceptible to rain fade. So DirecTVs HD and locals will go out first (which are on Ka,) then finally SD (Ku,) then SD will come back, then HD/Locals. For the Ku band signal disruptions are maybe 15 minutes at the maximum. It will be more time for the Ka band.

That being said, refer to my post I made 9 months ago for more of my thoughts:

http://www.satelliteguys.us/dish-te...1-one-small-storm-out-goes-2.html#post2559065

Well apparently I have alot to learn about Dish. Twelve years with DirecTv, will be switching in the week or two to Dish H/J system. A SS of 64 is usually not very good with DTV. I live about 40 miles north of Houston in a heavily wooded area. It is currently pouring down raining as I write this from my phone, we still have a Satelite signal. My SS is usually around 92-94. Had construction going on one time at the house and had to move the Satelite dish for a temporary spot for a while. The SS was a 86 in the new temp location, as the spring season approached and the trees started budding out, my SS went to 58-60. To say the least we lost signal on every spit of rain & 5 mph wind blowing the trees. The signal would freeze up in perfect sunning weather. We moved back to the original spot after construction, SS went back 92-94 and all is good again. I need to learn more about the Satelites and thier locations and the SS for my new Dish H/J system.

In the Houston, TX area the minimum thresholds are:

Code:
Sat 110

TP 14 15 16 21
   63 67 64 64

Sat 119

TP 14 15 16 21
   59 70 71 73

Sat 129

TP 19 20 29 30
   48 48 49 48

Sat 61.5

TP 10 14 29 31
   44 50 55 45

Sat 72.7

TP 15 17 19 21
   52 50 52 50

Sat 77

TP 13 16 20 21
   34 34 36 38

(P.S. Just so everyone knows, this thread is 9 months old, and was bumped by some guy with only 1 post.)
 
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It's been pouring rain here for the last 4 hours and I haven't lost signal once. I am western arc 1000.2 my signals are mid 60's to 70 in the rain on 110&119 and mid 50's to 60 on 129 in the rain.

A lot of it depends on the direction the rain is coming in from and cloud cover. Fact is, satellite is susceptible to some rain fade. Placement, a bigger reflector and properly aimed dish is all you can do to mitigate rain fade.

Sent from my HTC Flyer
 
Been raining here in southeast Texas for the last 2 hours and I'm at my dad and moms house ,about 6 miles from mine. He has the western arc dish 1000.2 and same type of 722k receiver, ota antenna and ota module as I do. I installed his 1000.2 again after hurricane Ike came through back in 08. He lost signal several times and the message total signal loss kept coming up and I think I figured out why. He has some ota channels that were weaker than my strengths and he is between two 2 story houses and some trees. He is using an antenna that is well rated for his local area, but good for my area. I deleted all his weaker ota channels and I took the splitter off of the antenna that was going to his ota port on the tv . I plugged the antenna straight into his ota tuner on his sat receiver and no splitting the signal. His ota came back up about 3 - 5 points on all his channels. After a hard reboot of the sat receiver , everything came back on and he didn't lose his tv again. Oh and it was raining pretty steady through out the entire time I was working on the sat receiver. So sometimes it is weak ota channels and the splitter you use that can cause problems.

When I got home and checked the same ota channel the news was recorded on , that my dad was trying to record on , I had not lost the signal at all and my recording was fully intact.
 
Well apparently I have alot to learn about Dish. Twelve years with DirecTv, will be switching in the week or two to Dish H/J system. A SS of 64 is usually not very good with DTV. I live about 40 miles north of Houston in a heavily wooded area. It is currently pouring down raining as I write this from my phone, we still have a Satelite signal. My SS is usually around 92-94. Had construction going on one time at the house and had to move the Satelite dish for a temporary spot for a while. The SS was a 86 in the new temp location, as the spring season approached and the trees started budding out, my SS went to 58-60. To say the least we lost signal on every spit of rain & 5 mph wind blowing the trees. The signal would freeze up in perfect sunning weather. We moved back to the original spot after construction, SS went back 92-94 and all is good again. I need to learn more about the Satelites and thier locations and the SS for my new Dish H/J system.

You cant compare DirecTV and Dish Network signal strengths....totally different systems, totally different metering scales.
 
Thanks for info ... I starting to learn that they are really different.....now with DirecTV...you got your coordinates and align the dish/lnb and use the signal meter to get your best signal. I'm reading that you guys use several Satelites , are do you pick your best for you location, or I just confused as how your are setting it up. The following codes were on the previous page and posted for the North Houston area. I understand the Sat #, but what are the other #'s ......coordinates or signal strength...sorry about the ignorance ...never had to deal with it before.


Code:
Sat 110

TP 14 15 16 21
63 67 64 64

Sat 119

TP 14 15 16 21
59 70 71 73

Sat 129

TP 19 20 29 30
48 48 49 48

Sat 61.5

TP 10 14 29 31
44 50 55 45

Sat 72.7

TP 15 17 19 21
52 50 52 50

Sat 77

TP 13 16 20 21
34 34 36 38
 
Those are signal strengths for individual transponders on each satellite. Transponders can be either conus that broadcast to the entire US or spot beams that only broadcast to a specific region. Locals are on spotbeams. Dish has two arcs. Eastern 61.5, 72, 77 and Western 110,119,129. Location for locals and Line of Site determines what arc you need to use.

Directv is similiar, they have satellites at 99,101,103,110, and 119 I believe. SD installs with Direct gets 101,110,119 and HD gets all of them
 
Some HD installs for DirecTV only need 99,101,103.

Anyway, that list I gave is what is considered the minimum signal threshold for the Houston area. Many times the installers get a bit higher signal levels than that but those are the minimum acceptable signal strengths. "TP" stands for transponder, when you're in the Point Dish screen you type it in the transponder field after you have selected the proper sat. As osu1991 said you will either be on Eastern Arc (61.5, 72.7, 77) or Western Arc (110, 119, 129) depending on your locals (that can be checked on http://thelist.satelliteguys.us/) and your LOS (line-of-site, in other words, clear view of the sky.) There is also an International sat at 118.7 (FSS) if you need International channels.

As far as coordinates are concerned, if you're not installing the satellite dish yourself, you have no need to worry about those. However if you're doing it yourself, head on over to http://www.dishpointer.com/ for the proper coordinates.
 
Thanks .. U guys r awesome ....this site is great..I am also now a fan of OTA ...found an old antennae in attic that was used years ago for locals...rewired & added amp...shazzam I am greeting about 60 more channels. METV is cool, big fan of classic TV...sorry didn't mean to side track...thanks for your help
 
Hopper won't have OTA capabilities when it is released. They plan on making it capable "soon" though. The current VIP receivers have OTA capability. Welcome to the red side (Dish!)

By the way, just because Dish's signal meters are lower doesn't mean the signal is weaker than DirecTV :) . Just a different way to interpret the signals. Dish actually uses some of the same orbital slots as DirecTV.
 
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