AcousTech
06-10-10, 08:20 AM
Hello SAT Gurus!
First time posting so I hope I don't violate any guidelines here. And I do apologize for the long post. I'm trying to provide all the detail I can. Here is my situation. We live in a suburb of Seattle. A few weeks ago our HD service just cut out totally. It may have been after a storm, but I can't recall for sure. Prior to that we would have occasional pixelation, but generally signal was OK. That's been the way things have gone for the last 3 years. HD reasonably fine for that time and then nothing.
So I called DirecTV and they sent out a tech(after getting me to sign up for their maintenance plan for a year). He took one look at our environment and said the problem was line of sight. Now it is true that we have a lot of tall trees around us, but that doesn't explain why signal goes to 0 all of a sudden. Like I said - we've had HD for 3 years. So he told me it could be the LNBs that had gone bad on the dish itself. We had the old sidecar 5 LNB model. Unfortunately he couldn't replace the satellite dish because current mounting guidelines require two monopoles and in my case there isn't a place for those. So he didn't replace my dish.
Because of where I live cable isn't a realistic alternative. They'll charge $11,000 to isntall it, so I'm inspired to try to make DirecTV work. I went ahead and bought a new Slimline 5 dish and installed it myself. I got the coordinates, made sure my mount was level, set AZ, EL, and Tilt (134,32,108). I got signal back to about where it was with the old dish. Incidentally I did find a way to get one of the monopoles installed, but I think that's just gravy. Anyway, I called the tech back and he came out to aim it for me. While he was aiming it with the Birddog I asked him if he did the combination of the 101 first, then the 119 along with the dither process. He said that honestly all he ever did was lock in the 101. The numbers are below. While he did get the signals much stronger than I had,sadly, my 99c strength is still 0(one transponder on 99s did show 27, but that was it).
His suspicion is that the following things could be wrong in order of likelihood:
1. LNBs on the new dish are bad
2. Cables between the dish and receiver are bad
3. Receiver is bad
He didn't have a replacement with him to be able to test replacing the LNBs. I swapped receivers to test the cables. No difference there. The only items left to test(apart from the LNBs) are the B-Band converters, and the receiver itself.
So all of this sets the stage for my question. I don't believe that my signal strength went to 0 overnight because a tree jumped in the way all of a sudden. I'm OK with strength not being great(we are surrounded by trees after all), but occasional mild pixelation to nothing at all seems too extreme to me. So, does anyone have any suggestions? Is this an aiming thing, or would one of the other items be the more likely culprit? If it is an aiming issue, should I try the dither process myself - even if I don't have a signal strength meter? I've read that without the right meter you may not be able to get what you are hoping for. Anyway, signal strengths below. Anyone have any ideas for me?
Thanks in advance!
101 Tuner 1
80 84 81 0 80 92 82 89
80 85 80 0 8 94 80 95
71 99 79 0 81 94 80 92
82 0 77 99 80 94 78 95
101 Tuner 2
79 83 80 0 81 92 82 90
80 86 80 0 82 95 80 95
77 99 78 0 81 95 80 93
82 0 78 99 80 83 79 95
99c Tuner 1
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0
99c Tuner 2
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0
99s Tuner 1(for what its worth one of these did show 27 at one point)
0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
99s Tuner 2
0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
103cb Tuner 1
92 93 91 89 89 91 88 88
89 89 90 89 90 90
103cb Tuner 2
93 94 91 88 89 91 88 87
89 89 90 88 89 90
First time posting so I hope I don't violate any guidelines here. And I do apologize for the long post. I'm trying to provide all the detail I can. Here is my situation. We live in a suburb of Seattle. A few weeks ago our HD service just cut out totally. It may have been after a storm, but I can't recall for sure. Prior to that we would have occasional pixelation, but generally signal was OK. That's been the way things have gone for the last 3 years. HD reasonably fine for that time and then nothing.
So I called DirecTV and they sent out a tech(after getting me to sign up for their maintenance plan for a year). He took one look at our environment and said the problem was line of sight. Now it is true that we have a lot of tall trees around us, but that doesn't explain why signal goes to 0 all of a sudden. Like I said - we've had HD for 3 years. So he told me it could be the LNBs that had gone bad on the dish itself. We had the old sidecar 5 LNB model. Unfortunately he couldn't replace the satellite dish because current mounting guidelines require two monopoles and in my case there isn't a place for those. So he didn't replace my dish.
Because of where I live cable isn't a realistic alternative. They'll charge $11,000 to isntall it, so I'm inspired to try to make DirecTV work. I went ahead and bought a new Slimline 5 dish and installed it myself. I got the coordinates, made sure my mount was level, set AZ, EL, and Tilt (134,32,108). I got signal back to about where it was with the old dish. Incidentally I did find a way to get one of the monopoles installed, but I think that's just gravy. Anyway, I called the tech back and he came out to aim it for me. While he was aiming it with the Birddog I asked him if he did the combination of the 101 first, then the 119 along with the dither process. He said that honestly all he ever did was lock in the 101. The numbers are below. While he did get the signals much stronger than I had,sadly, my 99c strength is still 0(one transponder on 99s did show 27, but that was it).
His suspicion is that the following things could be wrong in order of likelihood:
1. LNBs on the new dish are bad
2. Cables between the dish and receiver are bad
3. Receiver is bad
He didn't have a replacement with him to be able to test replacing the LNBs. I swapped receivers to test the cables. No difference there. The only items left to test(apart from the LNBs) are the B-Band converters, and the receiver itself.
So all of this sets the stage for my question. I don't believe that my signal strength went to 0 overnight because a tree jumped in the way all of a sudden. I'm OK with strength not being great(we are surrounded by trees after all), but occasional mild pixelation to nothing at all seems too extreme to me. So, does anyone have any suggestions? Is this an aiming thing, or would one of the other items be the more likely culprit? If it is an aiming issue, should I try the dither process myself - even if I don't have a signal strength meter? I've read that without the right meter you may not be able to get what you are hoping for. Anyway, signal strengths below. Anyone have any ideas for me?
Thanks in advance!
101 Tuner 1
80 84 81 0 80 92 82 89
80 85 80 0 8 94 80 95
71 99 79 0 81 94 80 92
82 0 77 99 80 94 78 95
101 Tuner 2
79 83 80 0 81 92 82 90
80 86 80 0 82 95 80 95
77 99 78 0 81 95 80 93
82 0 78 99 80 83 79 95
99c Tuner 1
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0
99c Tuner 2
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0
99s Tuner 1(for what its worth one of these did show 27 at one point)
0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
99s Tuner 2
0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
103cb Tuner 1
92 93 91 89 89 91 88 88
89 89 90 89 90 90
103cb Tuner 2
93 94 91 88 89 91 88 87
89 89 90 88 89 90