Question on D* and Weather

1531 Views 10 Replies 9 Participants Last post by alnielsen, Jan 19, 2012

brockb961

Discussion Starter · Jan 17, 2012

I recently switched from E* to D*. While I wasn't unhappy with e*, I really liked the D* equipment and got an HR34 and 3 additional HD tuners. I was really happy with the service until a few days ago. At that time we experienced about 26 hours of pixilization and dropouts which ranged from mild to severe (meaning the service was unwatchable for more than an hour).

So...I called customer support, who spent the entire time telling me we had weather in our area (Lansing Michigan area). I even escalated up to a supervisor who just kept repeating the same thing. While it is true we had some weather, the weather was light snow, and I also had checked to ensure that the dish was free of snow. There was really nothing I could see with our signal strangth which seemed different than at install time, but the customer service folks seemed unconcerned about the duration of the issues and just kept going back to their "script" which says we had weather in the area. After pushing quite hard, they did agree to send out a technician. when he came out hoewever the "weather" was gone and he found no real issue except for a few slightly loose connectors.

I guess my concern is with this is if this performance is what we should expect from D* when there is "weather" in the area. With E*, we would experience short interruptions from time to time, but only when we received very heavy rain or snow. They also occured very infrequently. This is not at all what we had last week when we were experiencing these problems. Is there something else which should be checked? Is there any way to get the customer service folks to do more than look at weather maps and place the blame there?

So far, I really love the receivers, but I am very dissatisified with the performance and service received from d*....

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veryoldschool

· #2 · Jan 17, 2012

DirecTV HD comes at higher frequencies than either their SD or what Dish uses.
This can mean more loss/rain fade, but it does sound like your signals may not be as strong as they could be.
CSRs can't setup a service call during bad weather, as "most of the time" it clears and the problem goes away.
"Maybe" you could post the SAT levels off the HD SATs [99c & either of the 103c] and we might be able to get an idea of how well it's aligned.
I've had rainfade but never as long as 26 hours, or even an hour.

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PCampbell

· #3 · Jan 17, 2012

Wet snow can be a problem but no worse than with Dish, I live about 45 miles from you and have little or no problems signal fade. Cant rember the last time I had fade but my signals are all about 94 to 97. You may need an adjustment.

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AlanSaysYo

· #4 · Jan 17, 2012

I agree that you shouldn't expect to have those kinds of problems - my Midwestern weather never interferes with my DirecTV service for more than a few minutes at a time, and never for 26 hours. It's got to be that your dish needs an adjustment. Would be interesting to see what levels you're getting on a clear day. Did the tech check the levels during the service visit? He/she probably should have...

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veryoldschool

· #5 · Jan 17, 2012

AlanSaysYo said:
I agree that you shouldn't expect to have those kinds of problems - my Midwestern weather never interferes with my DirecTV service for more than a few minutes at a time, and never for 26 hours. It's got to be that your dish needs an adjustment. Would be interesting to see what levels you're getting on a clear day. Did the tech check the levels during the service visit? He/she probably should have...

A lot of times, the installer "aligns" the dish, but doesn't dither it while doing so.
I had a mover's connection [move] a few months back and had to dither mine to "get it right" and picked up another 10 points.
A friend also had a new install and needed the same.

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Jive Turkey

· #6 · Jan 17, 2012

I don't have to deal with Michigan levels of snow but I can attest that if your dish is properly installed and aligned you should rarely lose signal, and certainly not for 26 straight hours. Yikes. I would fuss and make someone come take a look at it.

In 2011 I think I lost the signal 3 times. Once was during a hurricane for about 90 minutes or so, and twice was for 5-10 minutes just as thunderstorms started rolling in. (All 3 instances were within 2 weeks of each other, oddly enough.) No way you should be losing it as much as you are.

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brockb961

Discussion Starter · #7 · Jan 18, 2012

Thanks to everyone for the info. This is what I expected and I'll try to get the levels this evening and post them on here. I'm just surprised that customer service would want to focus so much on weather - particularly with a new customer - rather than trying to get to the problem....

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DogLover

· #8 · Jan 18, 2012

That had to be frustrating for you. Try to remember, though, that you are likely more experienced than most new customers. (You wouldn't have called for normal short term rain fade.)

However, if 99% of the calls that seem just like yours are normal rain fade, and there is weather in the area, you can see why they would react the way they did. They have no way of knowing that you are the 1% of calls that was having a true signal problem that would still be there in clear weather.

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Beerstalker

· #9 · Jan 19, 2012

I know you said you only had light snow in your area, but what about the area south of you?

Also how was the wind? Is your dish exposed to a lot of wind where it is located? Does it have the two extra braces attached to the pole, or is it just mounted on the main pole without the extra braces? I say this because my dish is pole mounted, and doesn't have the extra braces on it. During the bad snwo/windstorm the other day the strong winds were able to make the dish move enough to cause service interruptions. It sucks, but it's just something I have to deal with unless I can figure out a way to shield it from the wind, or brace it somehow. I haven't had a chance yet to try.

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jamieh1

· #10 · Jan 19, 2012

The dish does not have to be blocked to have bad reception by weather. There are times when my signal goes out several minutes before a heavy rain starts. The signal is blocked by the heavy rain thats is near.

Also in times of weather, you can switch over to a Standard def channel and there is a better chance at getting a signal. As mentioned, MPEG 4 signals tend to go out quicker than the MPEG 2 SD channels.

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alnielsen

· #11 · Jan 19, 2012

It takes a heavy snow storm before I loose signal. Then I switch over to a SD channel and continue watching. The only time I've been without service for days was after an ice storm, when the LNB was covered.

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