How Many Experience Weather Related Issues?

[MikeekiM]

My friend and I live in about the same area...within a few miles...

He has only been a customer of DirecTV for about a year, and we were talking about TV in general (and it was raining) and he made the comment "yea, you know, I really hate it when the weather messes up my signal"...

I have heard of rain fade and the like, but have never experienced it myself... And I have been a DTV customer for many years...

What is your experience with weather related performance issues?

Is it possible for someone to have a strong enough signal that he/she would not experience weather related issues? Maybe I am not watching shows when it's raining? Heck, I don't know... I highly doubt that is possible...

[Dkerr24]

Mine will go out during severe T-Storms here in Oklahoma. I get maybe 4 or 5 events like this a year where the rain is so heavy my reception drops to zero. It is unusable until the weather clears. Usually lasts less than 5-10 minutes each occurrence.

Also had it go out during a ice storm. Ice was almost 1/2" thick on the dish when I went outside to inspect it.

[bigpuma]

I also live in the Bay Area and I have never experience an outage in the 6+ years I have had DirecTV. If you friend is having problems here in the Bay Area he needs to get his dish re-aligned and properly installed. We just don't get the kind of weather that should cause that many problems.

[wmconlon]

Also Bay Area. Brand new TiVo user -- broadcast only. BTW, HD reception is great on the Peninsula -- I have about 40 digital channels plus the analogs on my HDTV.

Set up the TiVo last night and noticed pixellation/frame drops watching Seinfeld from KICU digital. I was concerned that it was TiVo, but I got some of the same with the TV, so I concluded the very heavy weather last night was the cause. But I heard some air traffic, so perhaps there is still a multi-path issue with HD.

I still have to compare the channel lists to see if the ATSC receiver in TiVo is as good as that built into the HDTV. During TiVo's channel scan, my impression was that it wasn't seeing as many channels as I have watched on the HDTV.

[John T Smith]

Vancouver WA - so a fair amount of rain

Previous house, with a well aimed (strong signals on all transponders) round 18 inch dish I would lose the signal in heavy rain or snow

Current house, with 24 inch round dish I installed myself, I have not (yet) had any lost signal days

[litzdog911]

A properly aligned dish should provide rebust signals even during heavy rain. I live in Seattle and almost never have rain-related issues.

[TonyTheTiger]

Here in GA, it is VERY rare for my signal to go out. Even with the recent snow I had a signal.

I only lose it in extremely heavy rain. In fact, I think I used to lose cable more often than I have D*!

[rhuntington3]

If it rains really hard, I'll get some rain fade but it usually only happens in the Spring.

[The Flush]

My signal strengths are all in the mid 90s, except on 2 transponders, 18, which reads zero and 26 and 28 which are in the low 80s. I am not sure if these other transponders should be higher or not. I have an 18" round dish, which I guess is 4 or 5 years old (got it back in the Pegasucks days). I get occasional rain fade in heavy rains, but not too often.

[bengalfreak]

Very rarely get rain fade here in southwest Ohio. Only during the heaviest rains in the Spring or a severe snowfall where the snow piles up on the dish. Even then, we never lose local channels.

[chuckg]

I live in Berkeley. 18" dish. SD from 101W only since 1999. Once or twice a year I may get a minute or three. One time was out 5 or 6 minutes.

I can look out my kitchen window and "see" the cloud burst(s) through which the signal must pass. No problem so far in this latest series of storms.

Where you live in the Bay Area can play a big part in whether you experience rain fade. Think Kentfield, for example. :) And your setup. Length of the coax. Use of a multiswitch.

[JimSpence]

My signal strengths are all in the mid 90s, except on 2 transponders, 18, which reads zero and 26 and 28 which are in the low 80s. I am not sure if these other transponders should be higher or not. I have an 18" round dish, which I guess is 4 or 5 years old (got it back in the Pegasucks days). I get occasional rain fade in heavy rains, but not too often.The TPs you mentioned are spot beams. Perfectly normal for those readings as you don't need them. The other spots are 4, 12 and 20.

I get rain fade when a heavy thundersorm rolls through. However, since the 5LNB dish has been installed I haven't been able to test it. :)

[cramer]

Yes, rain fade is real. It's made significantly worse by lazy (to be polite) installers who barely aim the dish in the first place. They're paid on volume, not quality. So, what you get from DTV's "professional installers" is functional and then they run away. So, if your dish wasn't installed in the rain/snow, it's probablly not perfectly aimed.

Aiming a dish properly requires a POWER METER. The only use for the aiming screen is to force the receiver to use specific transponders; it's signal quality isn't very useful as it'll show 90+ for a wide window.

[Trent Bates]

After 12 years as a DirecTV customer, One thing about rain fade (or other weather related issues) that I haven't yet read on this thread is that:

Rain or Snow above your location isn't the problem. It's the Rain or Snow to the South of you that can cause issues. It's the big mass of precipitation that gets in the way of your signal that can cause signal loss. Usually, it's only for a short period of time.

Ice and snow on the dish or LNB will at times cause problems as well. Those are usually a result of the storm being directly above. But that's not a fade issue as much as it's a signal deflection issue.

For us it really depends on the severity of the weather. I might encounter rain fade once or twice a year. If we have a harsh winter storm, I might have to clean off the dish4-6 times a day. That issue could be rectified by getting a dish cover though.

I agree with cramer. I've always installed / aimed my own dish. I will spend an hour making sure that I've got the best signal on all transponders instead of rushing through it. I bought an aiming meter 3-4 years ago but haven't had to aim my dish for 5-6 years so I haven't tried it.

[MikeekiM]

Thanks All... While I understand that rain fade is real... I think there must be something wrong with the dish aim of my friend... I have had solid dish aims for my dish and previous 2 dishes before it, and have NEVER experienced a weather related issue...

This is not to say that my programming has not been a victim of weather related issue, as I am sure that some of this happens when I am not watching (or recording)... But I find it very peculiar that he gets it so often, and discusses it like it is just an unavoidable and regular inconvenience...

[macizcool]

If your friend has his/her dish professionally aligned, it should have very little weather related issues. Before I moved and installed my own dish, I didn't have many issues. Now, it goes out with every storm (my signals are only around 65). My parents live around a lot of trees, and they have very little problems, as well, because it was professionally installed.

[Trent Bates]

If your friend has his/her dish professionally aligned, it should have very little weather related issues. Before I moved and installed my own dish, I didn't have many issues. Now, it goes out with every storm (my signals are only around 65). My parents live around a lot of trees, and they have very little problems, as well, because it was professionally installed.

I find that the "Professional installations" are usually less accurate. I'll bet you could improve your signals greatly with a little more effort!

[wkearney99]

Don't forget to check the cabling. Water had gotten into a grounding connection outside (previous homeowner had DirecTV before us). It would degrade the signal enough to cause the pixelization. But not during the rain, only a few hours afterward and then intermittently. Had a devil of a time getting rid of it, and only solved it by pulling a whole new stretch of coax so there were NO outside connections (besides on the dish itself). This greatly reduced the number of times we had signal problems.

[Ilovetorecord2]

I live in the bay area and have had directv for 7 years and this year is the first time we had a big problem.

Got the searching for satellite 1 or 2 and pixelation and not recording and waited a few days as it usually clears up but did not.

CAll directv and had to wait 12 days as there was alot of others who had the same problem.

Drove me crazy trying to find episode online so I would not miss certain series.

[bengalfreak]

For us it really depends on the severity of the weather. I might encounter rain fade once or twice a year. If we have a harsh winter storm, I might have to clean off the dish4-6 times a day.

I spray my dish with PAM (non stick cooking spray) at the beginning of the winter, and I very rarely have a problem of snow sticking to the dish. And when I do, I use a super spoaker filled with warm water to get rid of it.

[Trent Bates]

I spray my dish with PAM (non stick cooking spray) at the beginning of the winter, and I very rarely have a problem of snow sticking to the dish. And when I do, I use a super spoaker filled with warm water to get rid of it.

I remember I actually waxed my dish way back in 1996 a few times. I've also tried PAM and a few other ideas. In the location my dish is in now, it's not so much the snow "sticking" to the dish, it's that the snow lands on the arm and builds up from there and eventually obscures the LNB. It's usually not really stuck on anything.

I've noticed that even with thin layer of show on the dish, I usually get a watchable signal.

I've seen dish heaters and considered a nice heat lamp bulb pointed at it but generally it's not that much effort to reach up with a snowbrush. :)

[Trent Bates]

I live in the bay area and have had directv for 7 years and this year is the first time we had a big problem.

Got the searching for satellite 1 or 2 and pixelation and not recording and waited a few days as it usually clears up but did not.

CAll directv and had to wait 12 days as there was alot of others who had the same problem.

Drove me crazy trying to find episode online so I would not miss certain series.

Wow. What was the actual cause of the outage? What did they do to fix it? It's almost sounding like an area wide thing the way I'm understanding what you wrote.

[chuckg]

Wow. What was the actual cause of the outage? What did they do to fix it? It's almost sounding like an area wide thing the way I'm understanding what you wrote.

Well, I live in the Bay Area and I didn't have any problem. Other than 6.3e, of course, on a Series 2.:)

[Trent Bates]

That's what I'm curious about. I would think we'd have heard about a large area outage so I'll bet that I misunderstood the issue.

Still, I'd like to hear what caused such a problem that it took over 12 days to fix! The only time I've been out of service is when I moved and had to install my dish and run the cables to the basement. That took a couple of days for me to do. :)

[Ilovetorecord2]

It took the 12 days as they had a lot of service calls in my area (south san francisco).

The problem might be more than the weather as he replace my dish as he said it was rusted and something else was a problem and it was not that old.

So problem the equipment more than the weather.

[natgild]

I have a place in the Sierra Nevada mountains. I find I get loss of signal/picture with wet snow. If the temperature is low(mid twenties and below) and the snow is light, my dish can almost fill with snow before I lose signal. The minute the sun hits it and I start getting wet snow, there goes my signal. It seems like I lose signal with just a thin layer of that real wet snow. I have a friend who put heater tape on the back of his and he claims that works pretty well.

[CrashHD]

My original dish was an 18 inch round dish that I installed myself. It rarely suffered rain fade, usually only for 1 to 2 minutes, but periodically up to 10 minutes. The only storms that ever caused me loss of signal were either extremely torrential downpours (An inch and a half of rain in less than 10 minutes), or severe tornadic storms. My wife is a bit paranoid about storms, and she would get really freaked out when the tv drops out in the middle of the emergency weather report, so last spring I installed a 24" round dish. In the severest weather it's been through, there was 3 to 5 seconds of pixellation at one point in a recording. Otherwise no dropouts.

A 24" dish was necessary for me to accomplish this, because I do not have access to a signal meter for an extra-precise alignment, and because the wooden pole the satellite foot is mounted to sways almost 2 inches in a heavy wind. I believe with a sturdy mount point, and a signal meter for a precise dish alignment, I would not have had rain fade.

[Trent Bates]

One thing to keep in mind about "precise alignments" is that there are at least 7 (IIRC) DirecTV satellites in the 101 degree slot. It's not important to get one or a few good transponder signals, it's important to get a good average of all of the transponders that you should be able to view. Also, Spot beams are stronger than the CONUS beams.
Knowledge of what transponders apply to your area and which are spot beams really helps here. There used to be a nice graphical representation of this somewhere.

[brian9013]

I used to have direct tv, when I had their service their sub contracts didn't know didly, and didn't listen to me. I told the guy to find a better place for the dish so that it wouldn't move and for a better signal he never did. Heck one even fried my receiver, and direct made me buy a new one. Weather issues was only half the problem I had with them. Billing was the biggest problem I had with them, they liked to turn my service off with out telling me. At first it looked like it was my fault, until one month I had to make like 3 payments, then I was told that I was all caught up and won't have to worry about the bill for a while. Wrong! 3 days later service turned off! Called up direct and they told me that another portion of my will went past due, so they turned off my service. I chewed them out saying that I had already made payments. That's when they told me about the other portion of the bill. He also told me that they have a $12 cap on the bill's if you go .01 penny over the $12 they will turn the service. Needless to say I canceled them right away. I have dish network, I haven't had any billing issues with them. Or service issues, customer service though isn't the greatest. Had issues with signal, but eventually got them to come out and realign the dish. It had to be rotated about an inch to get the signal back to where is was when I first got service. We're talking about a few years after starting service. Quality is by far better than cable and direct. Plus cable is way over priced, ever since Comcast came in, after comcast came in prices went up. My dad and had them before switching to dish. for the same reason. Comcast was too much money.