Dish Network performance in bad weather

[blade]

Originally Posted by stanger89

It's pretty much got to be a thunderstorm in my experience. And beyond that it has to be largely south of you. Or to put it another way, basically what it takes to knock out the signal is a big, tall, high precipitation cell that lines up directly between you and the satellite. Basically means a rather strong thunderstorm that covers the area south of you.

As I stated above it's been quite a few years since I've had DirecTV so it may be a lot better now. I don't doubt your experience, but it definitely wasn't mine. I had perfectly clear summer days where a brief heavy rainstorm would pop up and knock out the picture for anywhere from 5 minutes to 1hr. I remember one time in particular where the sun was still shining during the downpour and I had no picture. I'm not talking about light showers but really heavy rain.

My point though is weather is really the only thing to worry about with satellite. Any other problems is going to affect all of their subscribers and as such is fixed very, very quickly. Where as with cable, if you're unlucky enough to get spotty service, there's much less incentive because you may be only one of millions of their customers with that issue. Cable can go out for hours or days if something goes wrong.

Satellite, worst case you're out for a few minutes while the storm passes.

I agree with most of what you're saying, but I experienced more outages due to weather in the 4 years I had satellite than in the 10 years I've had cable. I'm not saying satellite was so bad that I wouldn't consider switching back or that it was a major problem just that it was an issue from time to time.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by blade

As I stated above it's been quite a few years since I've had DirecTV so it may be a lot better now. I don't doubt your experience, but it definitely wasn't mine. I had perfectly clear summer days where a brief heavy rainstorm would pop up and knock out the picture for anywhere from 5 minutes to 1hr. I remember one time in particular where the sun was still shining during the downpour and I had no picture. I'm not talking about light showers but really heavy rain.

A friend of mine had a problem with Direct maybe a year ago. Longish story short, the original installer botched the dish installation, didn't properly reinforce it and such to where wind would screw it up sometimes and it was in general, very rain-fade sensitive.

A call or two to Direct and a different installer was out (with apparently a QC person overseeing) to get it mounted correctly and the problem are now gone.

I agree with most of what you're saying, but I experienced more outages due to weather in the 4 years I had satellite than in the 10 years I've had cable. I'm not saying satellite was so bad that I wouldn't consider switching back or that it was a major problem just that it was an issue from time to time.

It really sounds like your dish wasn't aimed properly. That and you've got better cable service than we have here. For example I've seen "signal lost" on my parents cable on days where my satellite was fine. And I seriously doubt that company cheaped out on anything as they built a (supposedly) billion dollar fiber network in our town and deployed Cisco uBR900 cable modems.

But really my point is just Cable likes to call out rain fade, which yes does happen during "unusually" bad weather (or more with bad setup), but it's usually not for very long (no longer than the storm) while I've had, and heard of much worse cable problems (poor signal quality, dropouts, etc). Neither is perfect, with sat, at least you know when it's going to go out and (probably) when it will be back. With cable, it's a crap shoot.

[trini0]

S. Fla here. (Home of the Hurricanes and Lightening Strikes). At my mother's place with Standard def. DirecTV and the dish with a clear view to the sky, only in the really bad storms she loses the signal.

At my place, where my HD Dish is on the balcony of my 2nd floor condo, with a not so clear view of the sky, it would occasionally lose signal with moderate cloud cover. As such I installed an antenna in the attic/crawl space for the locals...

[davephan]

We had Dish Network about 6 - 7 years ago. When there is moderate to heavy rain, the signal can go out for 20 - 40 minutes. It's very annoying when it happens when you're watching live. It's more annoying when you find out a recording is ruined by the outage, and there aren't any more repeats of the program by time it is discovered.

The prices for Dish Network may be less than cable, after the two year package, so even though the rain fade is annoying, it might be worth switching to it.

It is a good idea to have a OTA setup for your locals, and not depend on satellite or cable tv. Both can have outages. When you want to watch for weather information, it is very annoying when the satellite signal goes out, and you don't have a backup system with an antenna. I have dedicated tuners just for OTA. The OTA channels are removed from the cable tuners.

Dave

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by davephan

We had Dish Network about 6 - 7 years ago. When there is moderate to heavy rain, the signal can go out for 20 - 40 minutes.

That really sounds like you had a substandard satellite dish installation, at least compared to today.

It is a good idea to have a OTA setup for your locals, and not depend on satellite or cable tv.

I agree, but for a slightly different reason. Mine is, it's "free" and gets you more tuners without the need for as many STBs.

Both can have outages. When you want to watch for weather information, it is very annoying when the satellite signal goes out, and you don't have a backup system with an antenna. I have dedicated tuners just for OTA. The OTA channels are removed from the cable tuners.

Dave

Frankly my Dish is more reliable poor weather than my OTA. But I think I'm in a kinda multipath disaster where I am or something so that doesn't help. But seriously, my OTA signal will flake out (but not usually disappear entirely) with even a light rain on some channels even though the dish is fine.