99 a goner

There are a few of us who have discovered this problem over the last few days. Do you use a switch from the dish?

I believe there is a switch up there now. I used to do all my own installs but let them handle it this last time round so I'm not 100% sure how they ran it this time. I vaguely recall them telling me they put a switch in the attic.

I'm good friends with the installer in my area, & his opinion is that the "bird dog" sat finder he uses does NOT come with 99 or 103 in it's program. He has installed all the dishes the past 2-3 years by 119 & 101 sat's I believe. His stance was that if you dial in those sat's, the others fall into place. True, to a point, but not "dialed in" to the best numbers on the those sat's. I told him 2 weeks ago he is gonna be busy the comming weeks. He is out late today re-aiming dishes as we speak... :lol:

couchpotato said:

I'm good friends with the installer in my area, & his opinion is that the "bird dog" sat finder he uses does NOT come with 99 or 103 in it's program. He has installed all the dishes the past 2-3 years by 119 & 101 sat's I believe. His stance was that if you dial in those sat's, the others fall into place. True, to a point, but not "dialed in" to the best numbers on the those sat's. I told him 2 weeks ago he is gonna be busy the comming weeks. He is out late today re-aiming dishes as we speak... :lol:

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In theory, if one does the alignment correctly, by finding the mid-point of signal strength for 101 and 119 and not the "peak" of signal strength (a very wide zone, not a point), the alignment can be spot on for 99 and 103.

So many installers were used to just get 90 on 101 and call it good. With the 5lnb, they really needed to follow the process: find the left edge, find the same point on the right, aim to the midway point. (Or up/down.)

Cheers,
Tom

When I check my reception on the 99 slot, I am receiving great signals. anywhere between 94 and 96 % on all signals. The rest are N/A

I seem to lose my signal during the evenings now on 99 and it has been going on for a couple of weeks now. Might be time to re align it.

I had a similar issue, 99 was all blanks, and 103 was horrible too. I decided to just do it myself after having 2 service calls to fix a 119 locals issue without any success.

Well, I had to adjust the azimuth a bit, took maybe 10 mins and guess what. 99 and 103 are great now and my local issues with 119 are gone too. Looks like I'll be cancelling the "protection plan".

Agrajag said:

Well, now that a number of stations have moved to 99 I realized I have virtually no signal strength on 99. Go to the strength screen shows a signal strength of "6" on transponder 1 and zeros (and N/A's) on everything else.

I now am missing all the channels on 99. They're coming to the house for a service call on Wednesday but I'm concerned. They did the dish install not that long ago and it's the slimline 5-LNB so if it's not working now I suspect they'll have a hell of a time getting it working.

I've been a customer since 1994 so this could be pretty big if they can't get it to go. Is 99 especially hard to get?

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Don't know what your current 103(b)/(c)'s are like, but you should expect on these two satellites to get tp strengths mostly all in the 90's with good alignment. And "No," they're not "hard to get." It's quite common to find loose hardware on new dish installs, which can cause the dish to move slightly. That's all it takes to lose the Ka's. Good luck on Wednesday!

Would this explain why I have been having problems with some of my HD channels the past few weeks? Channels like ESPNNews, NFL Network, Disney, SciFi, CMT and some of the MLB EI channels have come and gone as far as reception. Sometimes they are pixelated, other times it just says searching for satellite, other times they are perfectly fine. The SD versions of everything has been fine.

This has been happening on both of my HD receivers.

I have a service call scheduled for Saturday morning, and I am hoping that all I need is to have the dish re-aligned, and that there is nothing wrong with the cables, etc.

I had the same issue. All I did was adjust the elevation of the dish and my numbers jumped all the way to mid 90s.

kenpac89 said:

Would this explain why I have been having problems with some of my HD channels the past few weeks? Channels like ESPNNews, NFL Network, Disney, SciFi, CMT and some of the MLB EI channels have come and gone as far as reception. Sometimes they are pixelated, other times it just says searching for satellite, other times they are perfectly fine. The SD versions of everything has been fine.

This has been happening on both of my HD receivers.

I have a service call scheduled for Saturday morning, and I am hoping that all I need is to have the dish re-aligned, and that there is nothing wrong with the cables, etc.

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Yes, it certainly would explain...... A thorough inspection of how your dish is mounted is in order, if all the dish mount bolts are tight. It's possible that the mounting plate is loose and has sagged. It may be necessary to remove the dish and re-plumb the mast after correcting any deficiencies.

Again, 99(a)/(c) and 103 (b)/(c) signals mostly all in the 90's will be indicative of good alignment across all 5 satellite locations. Don't settle for anything less, unless you've got an HR21-100, where you can settle for all signals in the 80's on those two satellites. They're just a little different in our experience.....

Add me to the no 99 club. Now that they made the switch I get no TNT, Sci-Fi, HBO and many more. My 99 is 40-45% signal strength. My dish was installed by D*.

gquiring said:

Add me to the no 99 club. Now that they made the switch I get no TNT, Sci-Fi, HBO and many more. My 99 is 40-45% signal strength. My dish was installed by D*.

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Re-align it yourself or call DirecTV CS.

Well, I must be an unusual case because I get 40s-50s on almost all 99 transponders but no loss of signal on any channel so far

ercjncprdtv said:

Well, I must be an unusual case because I get 40s-50s on almost all 99 transponders but no loss of signal on any channel so far

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No, that's not that unusual. The Ka mpeg4 signals on 99/103 can remain locked in by the receiver to much lower levels, down into the 30's, than the Ku mpeg2's on 101/110/119. Unfortunately, because of their higher frequency (18-20 gHz vs 12 gHz),they're also more susceptible to "rain fade" and will disappear altogether for you during any significant rain showers in the LOS. You're right on the edge.

K4SMX said:

No, that's not that unusual. The Ka mpeg4 signals on 99/103 can remain locked in by the receiver to much lower levels, down into the 30's, than the Ku mpeg2's on 101/110/119. Unfortunately, because of their higher frequency (18-20 gHz vs 12 gHz),they're also more susceptible to "rain fade" and will disappear altogether for you during any significant rain showers in the LOS. You're right on the edge.

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Thanks! We shall see....rainy season in SoCal is generally Jan-Mar

Well, the tech just left. Thankfully he was a good guy (I've had the bad ones there more than a few times) and though he didn't seem to be up on the MPEG-2 -> MPEG-4 move he said it'd be just five minutes and I'd be fixed.

He went up on the roof and less than five minutes later my entire signal strength was improved across-the-board. The ironic part was when I brought up 99 and it showed zeros everywhere. I thought this meant I was screwed but he claimed you never see anything there. Huh? Sure enough all the MPEG-4 channels on 99 are working flawlessly.

I'm a happy camper again. A slightly confused happy camper but a happy camper all the same.

Mighty fine! Are you looking at 99(s) or 99(c)? On your HR20-700, you should see good signals on all 12 available tp's on 99(c). 99(s) has only spot beams for HD locals.

Menu button > Parental, Fav's & Setup > System Setup > Satellite & Ant > View Signal Strength

Navigate with remote to the 99(c) menu page.