Saturdays Snow

[Chinatown]

For those of you with Cable, that are hesitant to get satelite because of lost signals, fear not.  My signal is crystal clear, and no, I have not swept the dish.  

See & hear what you have been missing, and disable the cable. You will then get the full benifit of what your system can bring.

[dj1111]

I have been a DirecTV subscriber for over 7 years now and I can probably count on less than 2 hands the times it lost its signal due to weather.  And it's mostly rain and only lasts 5 minutes or so at a time.  I see this as no big deal considering, other than these few rare times, the picture is absolutely crystal clear perfect.  Something I never could say about cable.

I know there have been improvements to cable TV over the years, but at the time I gave up on it there were so many days my picture looked like it was coming through a weak set top antenna.  So I gave up on that in the late 80's and went back to OTA.  Then when it was time to buy a big screen TV (1998) the salesman said, "you're not planning on watching cable through this are you?"  I knew exactly what he was talking about.  So I was soon researching digital satellite TV and settled on DirecTV.  And I will NEVER go back.

Bottom line, if people are telling you to prepare for constant lost signals they're either talking through their ***, or did a poor job aiming their dish.

[Nels Harvey]

All three of my E* receivers (811, and 522 DVR) lost lock Friday evening at the start of the storm.  They all needed to re-acquire the satellites, and the guides.  I believe this happened because the storm clouds were too dense for a brief time.  The signal returned, and is still strong, even during the height of the snowfall.

Nels....

[Matt Heebner]

I never once lost signal during the snow storm. In fact I do believe that about 98% of the time I've lost signal is from water heavy clouds during rain storms. Usually about 5-10 minutes.

Matt

[Paul S.]

I don't want to buy a HD box, finally pay it off, then have to upgrade. I would also have to get a total of 3 boxes, one being HD. I have never lost a signal with TWC (unlike  DTV where everytime a cloud was in the sky it would bug out).

[dj1111]

I work with a guy who gave up on DirecTV because he said he constantly lost the signal.  I don't understand.  We go for 3 to 4 months without any loss.  And when it happens it's so brief we can typically use it for a potty break.  I still contend it's bad installation/aiming.  Since intalling my system (Dec 1997) and I did the install myself, I have not touched the dish once.  My signal meter is usually around 98%.  If your signal strength is not at least 95% get out there with some wrenches and make some adjustments.

[Talos4]

Never once lost the signal through the storm.

My dish had a drift from the LNB arm to the dish and up about 6-8" that i didn't know about until I dug out the back door and looked up at the dish and antennas.

I just left it considering I had no problems with my signal.

I've also had DTV since 1997 and like many others outages are few and far between and very short lived.

I agree installation is everything.

Twice a year I'm on the roof checking the roof, gutters (it's the roofer in me, I can't help myself )  the tightness of all bolts and screws on my Dish and OTA antenna tripod, masts, rotor, coax connections, waterproofing etc.

[murdoc]

Never once had a problem with D* reception in the snow or rain.  It's always steady at 98%.  Get on your roof and reaim that dish!

[bubbaridesfast]

I recall losing cable signals in snowstorms in the days when I had cable. In fact there was a time I lived in North Carolina and cable was out for 24 hours after we had 18 inches of snow. Talk about cabin fever, you couldn't leave your house because the roads were not plowed for 2-3 days and no cable!

I have never lost D* during a snowstorm and last Friday-Saturday we were couch-potatoes during the storm. We do lose the signal during rainstorms once or twice a year but like others have said it is very brief. I left TWC because of the yearly increases and poor picture on many stations. I remember in the 70's when Meno. Falls was first wired for cable and they had salesmen going door to door. The salesmen sat in our living room and told us we would never see ghosts again. I can't count how many times I watched cable with a ghost image on the screen.

[pretzelkid]

I had E* for 2 yrs and the couple three times the signal was lost due to rain I took it as a sign we were gonna have a real gully washer coming through...I wouldn't have been watching TV with that much going on anyway. The only thing that really bugged me about DISH was how compressed a lot of channels are and how splotchy it made the picture look in dark scenes
 :drink:

[StarvingForHDTV]

I remember in the 70's when Meno. Falls was first wired for cable and they had salesmen going door to door. The salesmen sat in our living room and told us we would never see ghosts again. I can't count how many times I watched cable with a ghost image on the screen.

I remember when I turned off my cable and went back to analog via antenna.  The local stations were much clearer by antenna.  Analog cable was absolutely horrible when I used to have it.

[dj1111]

That story from bubbaridesfast is amazing.  Back in the bad old days of cable the exact same thing would happen to us.  We'd get some bad winter weather and cable would go out for hours, sometimes a whole day.  Just at the time when you wanted the Weather Channel.  But rarely with thunderstorms.  Never found out why.

One of the other reasons I like satellite and now HDTV is pride in ownership.  When you've purchased and installed everthing yourself and know where every wire and connection is and you keep it all working at peak performance, well, you guys understand.

[Bebop]

The only snow storm that affected my Directv was the storm in Colorado. It happened within a year  launch of the service. Their uplink station was hit by a bad storm. The whole country was affected.