Rain Fade: DirecTV Verses Dish Network

[davephan]

I used to subscribe to DirecTV about ten years ago. A few years later I subscribed to Dish Network for about five years. I now have subscribed to Comcast cable TV for almost a year. My cable TV rate will increase dramatically soon, so I may need to switch providers again.

DirecTV had severe problems with rain fade. The slightest mist or light rain wiped out the signal. Dish Network was much better, but still had many rain fade outages each year. Cable TV never has rain fade outages.

Perhaps DirecTV's satellite signal level has increased in the past ten years. Could some current DirecTV subscribers comment on how many rain fade outages occur?

Dave

[dbfresh23]

I don't really have any problems with my DirecTV unless it's a very bad storm. I'm in NY and since this afternoon we've gotten about 7" of snow so far and it's still coming down hard. I'm watching crystal clear HD as I type.

I found I had more frequent signal loss with my old 3lnb dish then with my new 5lnb.

[Wakecrash]

Sounds like a setup problem, dish pointing, improper cable/splitters, cable lenght, trees, etc.

I took some time adjusting the dish. I didn't just adjust till I had good signal, but adjusted up, down, left right to make sure I was centered, double checked against multiple transponders.
I have a dual LNB, going to a 2 to 4 splitter feeding 4 recievers.

If your problem was due to the technology, Directv would be out of business.

[Lucas]

It's all about how much signal from the satellite reaches your dish.

If you live in an area were the sat signal is stronger then you can do with a smaller dish or handle more rain before the signal cuts off.

The more rain or moisture in the atmosphere the less the signal that reaches your dish.

First, you have to make sure your dish is aligned properly. You can also go for a larger dish.

I don't live in the US but I think the dishes used are 18inch size models.
If you go to 24 or larger and your dish is properly aligned then you will be able to watch though most weather.

You should note that no matter what size dish you have, some heavy thunderstorms will always block the signal for 15-20 mins while they pass over.

[rfutscher]

Originally Posted by Wakecrash

Sounds like a setup problem, dish pointing, improper cable/splitters, cable lenght, trees, etc.

I took some time adjusting the dish. I didn't just adjust till I had good signal, but adjusted up, down, left right to make sure I was centered, double checked against multiple transponders.
I have a dual LNB, going to a 2 to 4 splitter feeding 4 recievers.

If your problem was due to the technology, Directv would be out of business.

If you just do left - right and up - down you can still peak on a side lobe, giving you a low signal. You have to move off the signal to one side and then do an up - down. and then try the other side.

[Goodspike]

Originally Posted by Lucas

First, you have to make sure your dish is aligned properly. You can also go for a larger dish.

If I had to guess, I'd say the person complaining had a poor install. After my install I checked and was able to greatly increase the signal.

Also, the problems complained of were before the locals were on spot beams. With the spot beam channels I don't think I ever had a problem with rain fade.

But I did, however, also install a larger dish. The standard dishes at the time were designed to be more aesthetically pleasing.

[Apap]

I have to agree with the above posts about signal strength and dish pointing. I have yet to experience rain fade since I got a new dish installed for Directv HD.
The installer was very thorough in setting up and aligning the new 5lnb dish and that definitely improved reception over my original homeowner install.

[hemicuda]

For DTV you can, if you can locate one, use an old Primestar dish. LNB mounts in the same place; huge area to capture signals; only thing is that the elevation angles are off by a good 10-15deg where I live. I know people that haven't lost signal using that setup even when DARK clouds roll through.

[cummings66]

As a certified installer of both systems talked about here, and having been installing them from day one I have a point of view that I think is backed by experience.

First off, both will lose signal given enough rain and it doesn't even need to rain at your house. It only needs to be heavy enough and between the dish and sat, look at the angles and you'll see what I mean.

Second, many installs now are done on the cheap and peaking isn't always done as well as it can be. In some cases with the newer multisat dishes it's a compromise and you can't peak each and every sat to it's full potential. The older legacy dishes can of course be peaked very well.

Third, the rain fade issue can be aggravated by obstructions that in dry weather won't affect you, ala aiming between tree's works fine but if that tree branch moves when it's wet and heavy you'll experience problems. Moral of that story is to avoid it if at all possible.

Looking at the lnb's of each system seem to give the edge to Dish because of it's built in hood, but I think it's a slight edge. Looking at cable I will promise you our local cable system freeze frames during rainy weather as much as the little Sat dishes do, and they do it sometimes when it's nice out as well. Cable in general is no more reliable than sat IME, not in my area at any rate. It's better than it used to be, no doubt driven by competition to improve.

All of this to say, they all fade during rain. IMO you should unplug your TVs during a storm anyhow or someday you'll be calling the repairman to come fix your TV damaged by a lightning strike. Did I mention my full time job for the last 23 years is a television repairman? I have fixed more TVs damaged during storms than I can count, and as long as people keep them plugged in my job is secure. I get a lot of business after a good storm and no amount of surge protection will guarantee you'll be safe.

I'm not afraid to go to your house and watch TV, I'm certainly not watching mine because I've seen the results too many times. Insurance does not pay to replace it unless it's totalled, and most of the time you'll need to wait for parts of some such meaning instead of a couple hours down time you'll have days of down time. Poor trade in my book.

My thoughts are you had a poorly peaked system or some obstruction that caused troubles, possibly even a cracked cap on the lnb.

[derelicte1]

I agree with the others that it is probably an alignment issue, but here in florida rain fade is a real issue. If all else fails, you can try a gain master:

http://www.solidsignal.com/prod_disp...D=SACGAINCOMBO

[sportera]

Here down south in New Orleans we get our share of rain too, and pretty heavy much of the time. I had DTV many years ago, when it first came out and costs $800 for 1 small dish and receiver. Lost signal whenever it rained. Later changed to Charter cable after getting pis--d off DTV and loved it except for limited HD channels, especially the local HD channels. Then Katrina hit us and I found out what it was like to loose TV for more than a month due to cable issues. Then I found out the support people who work for charter, while probably the nicest people you ever want to talk to, were just that...all talk and no action.

Bottom line is I switched back to DTV a few months ago with newer dish and get pretty reliable signal during "normal" rain. But whenever there is a heavy storm or one up there, in line of sight of satellite, traveling toward me I get signal loss.

I'm stuck with DTV contract for a year now. But if cable ever gets their act together with a competitive HD channel line up and decent support, I'll go back to them. Especially due to the fact with cable:

1. you can run cable direct from wall to multiple (with splitter & amp) HTPC tuners or any TV in the house for all analog channels (except subscribed movie and sport tiers) without the need of a STB.

2. You can split wall cable signal to HDHomerun for getting HD channels (with 2 HD tuners) mapping through QAM and get digital Dolby audio direct from signal with true HD video. And HDHomerun doesn't care whether you use both HD inputs for 2-HD Cable inputs or 1-HD Cable + 1-OATV HD inputs, so you can opt to picking local channels up using attic antenna if necessary and still get, AND RECORD, both true HD audio and video.

3. Did I mention you don't need to have a STB in the house (if you are not subscribing to the movie channels)? I hate STB's being limited to S-Video input and no direct Dolby digital from signal input to HTPC audio SDIF input.

Sorry for long message, but I wish someone could have posted this one a couple of years ago. I would have saved a lot of headache and money.

[davephan]

I had the same experience with rain fade and DirecTV about 10 or more years ago, not long after DirecTV first came out. I switched to Dish Network after putting up with the rain fade after a few years. The DirecTV signal would go out with just mist in the air, when the Dish Network signal would only go out in heavy rain. That was a decade ago, things may have changed since then.

I have a cable box hooked up to my Hauppauge PVR-350, even though I have only analog cable TV. I tried hooking it up directly, and I get a snowy picture, even when using an amplifier. The tuner in my PVR-350 appears to be very insensitive.

I thought that a satellite box would be needed for each channel that you want to record with SageTV a the same time, plus satellite boxes for each TV that you want to operate independently of SageTV. I need to learn and understand more about HDHomerun.

Isn't a satellite box is required to convert that satellite RF signal received by the dish antenna and authorize the channels? If you can hook up the HDHomerun directly to the cable coming from the dish antenna, how can the channels be authorized? When I had satellite boxes, each box had a 'smart card' that controlled access to the channels. I thought DirecTV has more than one channel line-up.

I used to have many more channels during the first year of Comcast cable TV. After Comcast 'jacked up the price', then I cut back to only analog cable TV. The line is much better with DirecTV than Comcast analog cable TV. Although I would much rather have a la carte, since I only watch about a dozen of the channels (but I usually have to get a large line up to get the dozen that I really want).

If the DirecTV channels can be received without a satellite box for each television, that would be a big advantage. With analog cable, I can hook up the analog cable directly to TVs without paying a monthly cable box rental fee. Several satellite box rental fees made DirecTV and Dish Network more expensive than analog cable TV.

Dave

[Apap]

You definitely do need a separate DTV box and capture card port for each channel you want to watch or record concurrently. I currently have 3 boxes.

2 boxes are feeding the inputs on my PVR 500 in the HTPC. The third box is a D20 HD box connected directly to my primary TV. That solves the channel surfing problem. I own the 2 older DTV boxes that feed the HTPC and DTV charges me 5 bucks a month for each of those. I am also running 2 wired MVPs and 1 client pc. I rarely have any recording conflicts with this setup.

The biggest bitch about the setup was crawling through the attic to run the Cat5 wire for the MVPs. I already had the wife hooked on Sage before I took the DTV box out of our bedroom and replaced it with an MVP.

Apap