Dish - No reception during storm

[festivus]

There's a storm passing through right now and I have no satellite reception. This really sucks. So many people told me that this wouldn't happen.

18 months (I think) and I can switch back to cable. Hopefully WoW will be in my area by then. Wait! My reception just came back. Still, I'm pretty disheartened about it.

[Scott]

I have DirecTV and it happens about 3-4 times per year at most. Only really, really hard storms knock it out with wind and such. The biggest pain in the ass is in the winter when ice forms on the dish and LNBs. If it's on the roof, like mine is, hot water out an upstairs window is about the only thing that works. Most of what I record is OTA anyhow, so at least that still functions properly.

[festivus]

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to dealing with ice and snow. I'll have to get on a ladder to melt the stuff. Either with a bucket of hot water or a blow dryer.

Last night's storm didn't really seem all that severe. Knocked out reception for about 5 minutes. Enough to screw up a recording, had I been doing that.

[zelig2]

The storm messed up a recording that I had also. Luckily there was a repete a few hours later. I had a few cable outtages when I was with TWC but not very many. I was watching prerecorded stuff during the storm so I didn't miss much until the storm knocked the power out for about 10 seconds. Hmmm, maybe it's time for a UPS for the A/V equipment.

[Scott]

Oh yes. A UPS is a necessity where a DVR is concerned :D

[zelig2]

What kind of power requirements do the ViP 622 take? I think I might have some old APC UPSs laying around not doing much work. The big one is on my Mac but I at least have something smaller that could probably handle the load.

[Timcredible]

i haven't seen any outages on dish in the couple years i've had it, but i was watching ota last night during the storm, had a few 1/2 second outages due to lightning, but that was all.

[festivus]

I'm enduring my second reception outage tonight. The first one lasted about 10 minutes, this one has been going for about 2 minutes now. Any little freakin' storm knocks out the reception.

Is this something that I should call Dish about? Could my Dish be pointed incorrectly?

[zelig2]

It might not be mounted very well. A loose mount could sway around in the storm loosing alignment with the satellite. We lost reception here but that was only due to the power being out. (I know I know, I said I'd get a UPS on the DVR).

[festivus]

Dish is sending someone out on Saturday to take at look. Of course, my kid has a football game that I might have to miss in order to accommodate the good ole 12-5 appointment.

They agreed that my outages were too frequent. Yesterday, I had 3 outage events each over an hour apart. Each time that a storm cell came near I lost reception. The first was around 7:00 for 10 minutes. The second was near 8:00 for 5 minutes. The third was from 9:30 to about 9:50 with the reception going in and out about 3 different times during the 20 minutes before staying on.

I'm documenting all of this since Dish advises that reception is "rarely" affected by weather. If they can't do anything about this I'll play hardball with them to get out of my agreement. When I had TWC, I can't remember the last time that that I didn't have a signal. Thus far I'm pretty disappointed with Dish.

[Thombil]

My TWC froze on me last night too. Your expecting way to much. That was a big storm.

[festivus]

3 "big storm" events, 3 different days with service interruptions in the 6 weeks that I've had Dish. So I should expect an outage every 2 weeks and just live with it? Sorry, that won't cut it with me. In the 5 years that I had TWC at this location I don't remember it being out once. Everything else stunk though. RR was down a lot but never the TV.

[nakedeye]

with directv i loose signal on the very leading edge of massive storms. of course ota still works fine.

that being said, this is our lagrest storm time of the year remember...

[Gimpy McFarlan]

My TWC froze on me last night too. Your expecting way to much. That was a big storm.

+1

3 "big storm" events, 3 different days with service interruptions in the 6 weeks that I've had Dish. So I should expect an outage every 2 weeks and just live with it?

Yes, if storm so severe it dumps golfball size hail on the ground and threatens to unleash a tornado passes by then I would expect a Sat outage. Such storms are a rare occurance but they do happen. Mother nature can be evil sometimes.

[festivus]

This is not the expectation that Dish provides to prospective customers. Had I known that I would lose service any time that rain is moderate to heavy I would not have signed up. Satellite providers need to be more upfront with this information. Of course, the term "rarely" is used to describe outages on the website. My definition of "rarely" seems different from theirs. Do we "rarely" get moderate rainstorms?

However, I've read other forums where satellite customers have lost reception 2 or 3 times in a few years. To me, that's acceptable and that's why I did switch to Dish. Those comments lead me to believe that I might have a positioning issue.

I'll give them this opportunity to better position the dish and we'll see what happens. If it doesn't fix the issue, I would recommend sticking with the much more reliable cable companies. After my 18 months are up I'm hoping that wow makes it to my area.

Anyone out there have the superdish? I've read that the bigger the dish the better for rainfade. I have the dish 1000 right now. I might ask the techs tomorrow about upgrading.

[posty-mcpost]

I lost my Dish during the big storm but when I had Directv it was much more sensitive. When my Directv would drop it would usually kill my box too.

[festivus]

I believe that my system uses 3 birds. Today, my readings are 82, 82 and 98. Last night, they were 75, 75 and 105. From what I've read I'm getting an adequate signal. Why it drops off so much in only moderate rain is a mystery to me. I can understand the big hailstorm. I can't understand losing the signal every time that it rains. We'll see what the techs can do today.

[nakedeye]

you should be in the 90's around here

[festivus]

The tech guy came and left in 5 minutes. Said that my signal was good and he couldn't do anything. Said for me to call back if the problem persists.

I guess that the low 80's are good enough for them. Low expectations apparently...

[Timcredible]

that stinks. sorry to hear you're having such trouble - i've had dish about 2 years without issue (although i was watching ota during that bad storm, and had 1/4 of a second hiccup on every lightning strike). however, tw and rr are so bad, i can't even consider them an option (just my opinion here).

[festivus]

I look at this way. I'm stuck for only 16 more months. If the rainfade continues to be a big issue I'll switch to someone else at that time and advise others against Dish. But I'll first give them a chance to make it right. The service is great as long as the weather is great. Maybe I should schedule a tech appt when the forecast is for rain.

[mace]

Festivus,

I too am experiencing an unusual amount of outages with the 622. I have lost signal probably 20 times since early July.

I think it has something to do with the tuner itself. It's much more touchy when it comes to signal degradation than my other Tuner (VIP 211).

I have made it a habit of going to my other HD tuner and 95% of the time I still have a signal down there when the 622 is out.

I have called several times about the issue and they say they can only help me when the sattelite is out. So I call them back when it goes, and they say they need the sattelite to be "connected" so they can see what my signal is like. I have high 80's and low 90's for all three Sattelites. When the installers came they said they only have to make sure that its 70 or above.

I get very frustrated when it goes out, but fortunately watching DVR'ed stuff helps a bit. That or I just go to my other TV.

So.. I do feel your pain.

[festivus]

Thanks for the post. Misery loves company. My other receiver is the dual-tuner 322, SD. It too loses the signal when the 622 does. I haven't noticed a diff between the two as far as outages go.

The next couple of days will be a good test for me. Forecast is for showers but no big storms. If I lose the signal during a light shower I'll be calling dish again. Hopefully it won't happen.

Two things that would make these outages easier: 1) The ability to see OTA channels through tuner #2. 2) Make it easier to change to OTA channels while the receiver is searching for a satellite signal.

[festivus]

Well, as far as I could tell, no outages over the last day. My signal was down in the low 60's this morning on the bird that provides locals but apparently that's good enough. Score one for Dish. Especially since I get ESPNU now!

[zelig2]

I think mine went out for a bit during the rain last night. Luckily I was just watching prerecorded DVR stuff.

[nakedeye]

hey festivus, is it possible they re-used rg-59 already in your house?

[festivus]

No RG59 in my house. All RG6.

Hey zelig2. Have you encountered the following issue with the 622? Last night, we were going to watch a show that we recorded via OTA on Monday night. This show followed another show that we were recording. First show started at 9, second at 9:30. The second show didn't record. It was listed in my recordings with a recording time of 0:00. I thought that the issue may have been a conflict but we were recording nothing else at 9:30. Also, I thought that the overlap that can happen when you record one show a minute over and the next a minute early may have caused an issue. But, I do this with 2 other shows without issue.

It's possible that my kid may have cancelled the recording by mistake but I'm sure that he wouldn't admit it. Have you had any errors with this 0:00 recording time?

[mace]

I've gotten caught doing this. Cancelling various Mtv garbage that my wife DVR's. It shows as recorded but 0:00. This happens when I am watching something and the little timer comes up on the screen saying that I have 2 minutes to countdown until the channel switches and starts recording on that tuner...

I have never had a problem with overlap with recording either. I assume that it records the second show on the other tuner so it actually records both at once.

[festivus]

I'm going to reset my timers with no overlap. End one at 9, start the next at 9. I'll do this with all of my recordings. In this case, since they are both OTA (and same channel) I'm assuming that they both need to use tuner 1. Tuner 2 can't view OTA so it would only make sense that it can't record OTA. But that would be logical so it could be wrong.

Wife irritation level with this one is very high. We missed one of her favorite shows.

[zelig2]

The wife irritation level increases at our house when we loose signal for the OTA stuff. She'll usually say, "This never happened on cable..." She's right. But we never got ABC/FOX in HD either. I hope to get an external antenna installed in the near future.

I've never had the 0:00 recording though. I have stuff on OTA back to back recording on the same channel and also on different channels (Heroes to CSI:Miami & Earl to The Office). Monday's are a pain cause I record Heroes in HD from OTA and have to record Two and Half Men & The New Adventures of Old Christine in SD. I would like to watch them all in HD but that's not going to happen with the 622.

[festivus]

Yeah, I feel your pain. I was recording two and a half men and ...christine on Monday night when I got 0:00 for ...christine. Fortunately I never lose my OTA signal. Irritation level would be extreme with that.

I think that the only way that I'm going to be able to figure out exactly what happened is through testing. I guess it's possible that since I wasn't watching that channel (10.1. I was watching espnhd-9424) that the christine recording tried to use tuner 2 and my kid zapped it since it would have disrupted his viewing.

If I get the chance I'm going to set up some overlapping testing and see what happens.