DTV loss during rain

[abarnes77]

During this evening's thunderstorm I've repeatedly lost DTV's HD channels, or had severe pixelation on HD channels, for extended periods.  Is this something other DTV subscribers have experienced tonight?

This is my first real storm as a DTV customer, having switched from TWC about 6 weeks ago.  Until today I've been very happy.

[Joseph S]

It doesn't really matter. TWC gets most of their HD locals OTA. So when it rains their broadcasts suffer the same issues as you do.  They have dropouts when the affiliate has a problem and when TWC's antenna has a problem. Also when it rains in NY, NBC doesn't broadcast in HD for the most part.

[Talos4]

Now that you mention it We were watching DTV last night and forgot all about the rain until about 9:30 when the signal faded once.

I thought, What the &**(^ and then realiized it was pouring so hard I couldn't see across the street.

Other than that one time, I wouldn't have known it was raining, except of course for all of the lighting and thunder
{storm}

What type of signal strengths do you have on your HD channels? Or as Joseph said it could have been a network or affiliate break up.

[bimmer_immer]

Last night was a very heavy t-storm in Mequon. I lost signal a bunch of times and I have a 36" dish!

You can expect outages due to weather a half-dozen times per year. Mainly, it happens in spring t-storm season. This is called "rain fade" and typical outage is 5-10 min while the storm passes. The reason this happens is that the dense clouds block the satellite signal. Last night seemed particularly heavy/slow moving 'cause the outages were longer (15-20 min)

The other reason it can happen is during very wet heavy snows. It's not the snow falling, but it building up on the dish/LNB. A few gentle whisks with a broom fixes it, if you don't want to wait for it to melt off...

I do not want to bash cable providers, but in my experience, my outages were less frequent but much longer (many hours) when the cable went out. This may vary by cable provider and location.

-Brian

[abarnes77]

Thanks for the helpful replies.  It seems my experience last night was not unique to my system, which is what concerned me.

Today my signal strength is strong (low 90s on sats 101 and 119, low-mid 80s on sat 110), so it must have been rain fade.  As a DTV rookie I'm still learning (and I appreciate the help from you pros), but I'm very happy I switched to the dish after years of mediocre picture quality and inconsistent service from TWC.

[AndrewP]

Dish Network worked fine here yesterday. I think I never had outages since returned to Dish from Voom last May.