Satellite Dish for TV

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seeitrun2006

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Does anyone in Applianceville use Satellite for TV reception? I signed up with Dish Network thru my telephone landline provider. We are sick to death with Comcast and wanted to save some money in the long run.

Do you get good service out of the dish during rain storms and windy days?

One thing that which no one at Windsteam mentioned is everything I've read sayes you need a clear view to the southern sky in order to get a good signal. We have semi dense woods about 20 to 30 feet from our house that goes behind the entire side and back yard. The trees are anywhere from 20 to 30 feet tall. Does this mean I cannot use the satellite dish? Or does it face more upward to the sky instead of being horizontal.

Anything information would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
David
 
David:

Trees can interfere, but sometimes they don't. Wait until you've got your dish to worry about that part of it.

The setup for the dish and the converter box will include a step where you enter your ZIP code on the remote; there will be onscreen instructions on your TV telling you the angle at which the dish should be installed, in degrees. There is a little adjustable thingy on the dish, where the dish attaches to the mounting neck. You just adjust the adjustable thingy (which has degree markings on it) to the number of degrees given in the onscreen instruction; it's a simple matter of loosening a screw, moving the thingy to the proper degree marking, then re-tightening the screw. I think some satellite systems give the number of degrees by phone, but it's the same difference in the installation.

It's kind of like using the Internet for the first time- it makes NO sense when someone tells you about it, but once you have your hands on an actual computer, it very quickly becomes clear.
 
We had one for a number of years back when in Calgary when we lived in the country. The satellite company (Starchoice, a Canadian company) came and did the setup. Overall I was very happy with it. It was very very rare that we ever lost our signal due to a big thunderstorm. Less in all those years than the number of times our cable has fitzed out in 1.5 years here.
 
The best way to know for sure if trees are going to be a problem is to contact your satellite providers.

According to their online calculators, for northern Georgia (e.g. Decatur zip code 30032) you'll need a clear line of sight to the southwest, ranging from 39 degrees elevation (DISH Network) to 47 degrees (DirecTV).
 
I had Dish Netowrk in Maine and ended up going back to cable. When there is an emergency like a severe storm you will not be notified like you would with cable. That to me is a big problem. Not like we have tornadoes but severe thunderstorms and snow emergencies do happen and with the Dish you wont know whats going on.
Here in Mass we switched from Comcast to Verizon Fios. Very happy with Verizon so far and we have tons of channels and the picture quality is awesome. In the first 2 weeks we had a couple of issues but since then not a problem.
 
Called the Dish Network

I really don't think we will be able to do the dish. I spoke to the customer rep at Dish Network and she said if there is not a clear absolute view to the south of the house more then likely we will not be able to do it. Especially on a windy day when the trees swaying a lot. So for now we are probaly stuck with Comcast.

But the Dish Techs are still coming out tomorrow and we'll see what happens.

Thanks for everyone's feedback! I really appreciate it!
David
 
I have had Direct TV for 10 years and I'm very happy with it.
I only lose reception on days with very heavy rain. My in-laws switched to Dish Network from Direct TV and have regretted it. If one drop of rain falls, their tv's go out. Also, the boxes seem to be of lower quality. They have had some issues with the remotes and the box. Also, thier menus and guides look like a DOS program compared to Direct TV's Macintosh OSX.
 
Elevation:

Dave:

Because of the angle involved, techs are very often able to put your dish on a pole and get it up high enough for the signal to clear your trees. Since the signal comes in at an angle (usually somewhere around 45 degrees), even a very short pole can often get the dish up plenty high enough to eliminate the problem.

As you say, the techs can determine all that when they come and look at the situation.
 
At our last house, we had Dish Network. The installation crew was wonderful and reception was great. The installation crew was with Dish Network. This makes a difference.
When we moved to this house, we moved Dish Network with us. This time the installation was handled by a Dish Network contract crew. It couldn't have gone worse, they no showed us three times for installation. Finally showed up for installation at 10:00pm.
Put the Dish on the front of the house after we asked them not to. If someone on the block peed' in their toilet the signal went out.
Tired of this we switched to DirecTV. Much, much better. It is much more resistant to rain & foul weather outages. And I think the sound quality is much better than with Dish Network. The installation crew couldn't have been nicer, they put the dish where I wanted it. And they even used a signal strength meeter to verify the accuracy of pointing the dish.
We pay about $61.00 for month for "expanded" basic with no pay channels and we never use PPV. (Pay Per View).
Now, like Mike stated above if there is any kind of civil defense warning (tornadoes, flooding, etc) you won't received them on your satellite channels. You'd have to tune to your local network or independent stations to get that information.
For me, I just use the Internet to look at our local NOAA website to get the latest radar imagery and warnings. The link goes to YOUR local NOAA website.

 
I've had DirecTV since 1999 and I love it. I hope to never deal with a cable company again - several bad experiences in the past have made me decide that I won't watch TV (except local broadcast) if the only source available is cable.

I sometimes lose the signal in heavy rain, but DirecTV came and upgraded me (for free!) this week: DirecTV now has my local channels but I needed an HD compatible receiver box and a different, bigger dish. The installer told me that the rain problems will be less with this new set up. I live in a rather rainy area. And, before Hurricane Rita, I had some tree issues that I was able to overcome with a pole mount for the dish.

The new HD compatible box is great and has HDMI outputs as well as S-video and RCA jacks. DirecTV has 95 HD channels for a $9.99/mo extra fee. I was able to keep my old, discontinued programming package - which gives me 50 more channels than the newer available package at the same price.
 
Here's The Dish

Our condo homeowners association installed Dish Network in the clubhouse, but we had so many problems with reception, billing and service that we paid them off, yanked the dish off the roof and switched to our local cable provider (Cox). Myself, I have Cox for digital TV and Internet access; service has always been excellent, there have been relatively few reception problems, and I love the DVR/digital tuner they provide. I have been bombarded with offers of Dish or DirecTV, but I'm wary of switching over when I'm satisfied with cable.
 
We just switched to Direct TV here from Mid-west Cable vision. We are very happy and it will save us over $800.00 a year, 45 more stations, plus more HD stations along with DVR recording.

It has gone out in a couple of storms, but for me that is no big deal as you should not be running your TV in most thunderstorms anyway. Lightening can follow your cable lead as well as your dish, there is no surge proctector made that can withstand any lightening strike.

So far, $800.00 in my pocket is much better than giving it to someone else for poor service.

Morgan
 
Over this side of the pond....

Hey Guys

Over here Satellite is far more common than cable- Sky does Satellite and Virgin Media cable.

Personally am a happy loyal cable customer- it works out roughly the same price as Satellite, the Interactive/On Demand technology is far better and the Broadband is fibre optic so dosent rely on copper phone lines. :)

A link to the respective websites is below- Virgins first..

Seamus

 
Years back when I was contemplating going with a satellite service, I prefered Direct TV because it carried Speed Vision (car racing) whereas Dish generally didn't.

I stayed with cable (Comcast) until about 2003, and then dropped it. I use a roof antenna to get local broadcast TV - the picture quality is better than with cable. Plus, with digital TV I can get a number of PBS affiliated stations with great programming at all hours. Since I got a 42" 1080p LCD flat panel, I've noticed that the true HD broadcast channels have stunning picture quality.

For more distant stations (more than about 25 miles away) there can be some problems on rainy/stormy nights. But most local SF stations come in very well, with the occasional momentary dropout that I attribute to local Oakland International air traffic. My DVD recorder treats the dropouts as no signal and the recorded program has no pause, just a jump forward in the program, usually just a second or two is lost.

I figure I'm saving at least $600/year by not having cable or satellite TV service. That helped to pay for the flat panel ;-).
 
I really like Direct TV . . .

It is much, much better than cable in all respects: better picture, cheaper, and more channels.

I can't overstate how glad we were to dump the cable company. They started out as Century Cablevision, then became Adelphia and then Time Warner. A few days ago there was a little article in the LA times about how the City was investigating the poor level of service they offer. Duh! It would go off the air for several hours every two or three months, and a call to the repair service always elicited the same response: "That problem is not with our system, it is in your home and we'll have to charge to come out." Every single time it turned out to be a neighborhood wide problem that only got solved when they finally got enough complaints to send a tech out to fix their crappy cable devices. With Direct TV outages are very few and don't last long either.
 
I can't overstate how glad we were to dump the cable com

I wholeheartedly agree. When I was in college, the local company was really bad. They had to have a contract with the county to use the pre-existing overhead poles and other infrastructure. When their contract came up for renewal, the county, as always, discussed it at a public meeting - usually a low key formality. On this occasion, there was standing room only and even people standing outside who wanted to complain. The cable company did a lot of backpedaling and had to change quite a bit in order for the county to renew the contract. Even despite the changes, I never used cable while in college, and got DirecTV my last year there.
 

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