T.V. Satellite - N.F.

[Hookset]

I recently purchased a new Satellite system. Gotta say the World Fishing Network is amazing. It seems like there are hundreds of stations, and so far I have watched one lol.

Anyway, my question is, During the last 3 thunderstorms I've lost my signal for about an hour each time.

The technician, when he installed it said I have a strong signal and should hardly ever lose a signal except in a heavy snowstorm maybe.

The dish has a clear path so it must be something else. Rain accumulation or maybe the signal gets blocked due to the rain ???? I dunno. Anybody else have this problem ? I'm missing fishing shows here and I'll have to start

doing work around the house, or having a real life conversation, if I don't get this figured out.

 

Thanks,

 

Hookset.

[Canuck2fan]

Sorry to tell you but a thunderstorm will stop the signal no matter what your installer said. Wait until you start losing signals due to swaying trees that can be a real puzzler...

[Bernie]

Pretty much normal. Thunderstorm clouds go very high and dense. I still use the older larger diameter style Expressvu dishes for a little better signal strength.

[Guest lundboy]

"Rainfade" does occur especially if you have the smaller 15"-18" dish. If the alignment is not quite right you may have more problems than usual. I'm not sure about each E-Vu reciever, but if you have lower signal level (there should be a menu item that displays the signal level in a bar graph) the 85% to 95% I would say it is not aligned as good as it could be.

 

Also check to make sure that you have an absolutely unobstructed view from the the dish... no trees, other houses, apartment buildings, clothelines (do people still have those?) etc. If you don't you will have a weaker intermittent signal.

 

As for the dish size you can call Bell to have a bigger one installed which should clear up.

 

I have a 33" and have not yet had rainfade on express-vu. (I bought and installed it myself) 97% signal level.

 

Heavy snow storms have bumped out my signal though.

[danc]

clothelines (do people still have those?)

 

 

Sheesh. With electric clothes dryers and such these days, I can't imagine anyone with a clothesline. What a waste of time.

[Nanook]

DanCUp here in the boonies my wife[and a few others] prefer the Clothesline,saves on Hydro and smells a lot fresher too.

 

We have a 85% signal on Bellvu and occaisionally lose transmission due to rain storms, and snow storms in Winter

[Corey]

I think you have a bunk cable and when it gets overly wet, it shorts out until the water dries/drains out. But what do I know.

[danc]

DanCUp here in the boonies my wife[and a few others] prefer the Clothesline,saves on Hydro and smells a lot fresher too.

 

 

Mine was a sarcastic post Nanook. I love my clothesline too Bud..

[lew]

I've got StarChoice up at the trailer and have the same problem whenever it rains very hard, but as soon as the downpour ends, the signal usually comes right back.

 

Everybody else in the park has Bell Expressview and they all have the same problem too, so it would appear it's common with all smaller dishes.

[Zamboni]

A good way to fine tune the alignment is to slightly flex the dish without loosening the bolts/nuts when pointing a dish for max signal. Do this on the weakest transponder with someone watching the signal meter-you'll be able to figure out how to 'tweak' it for best reception....then loosen nuts and barely move it.

 

 

Gets complicated with oval dish receiving signals from 2 sats-this method allows you to see if any gains are possible-just get behind dish and very little force is needed to move signal meter. Often upping signal on 110 loses signal strength on 119 with dishnetwork so its trade off-see what effect re-alignment will have on a few transponders before committing.

[lew]

One thing to keep in mind when there's lightening in the area, is to unplug the system till it passes. We had a lightening strike in the park a couple years back and it blew out my dish and receiver box, even though the system is grounded with a lightening rod.

[bushman]

I lost my signal yesterday afternoon for 15 min and we did'n even get a storm up here .and i have over 90% signal here .

[Terry]

you have to remember that the signal is sent up to the sat. too so if it's raining hard where the uplink dish is, the signal will be weak coming back down

[oldschool]

I agree with everyone here in that satellites will lose their signal pretty much every time a storm passes through. But because of excessive dropped signals after I switched to the High Definition system a few months ago, I had a technician at the house to refocus the system for better signal strength. He was pretty forthright with me about my DishNetwork system.

 

With HD and local channels there are three receivers on the dish. One is for the local channels, one is primarily for the HD, and the last covers the rest of the channels. When swithing channels on the TV one or more of these may be in service. It seems that when channels are changed each of the receivers has a set of gears that move to refocus on any given satellite. The choices above are general, but not hard and fast as the company is moving new channels onto different satellites constantly.

 

Now, my point. He said that he has not worked with a new satellite dish or receiver in over two years. All of those that he installs are refurbished units, and he says that the quality is certainly substandard compared to new units. I asked him about a lifespan or symptoms of a malfunctioning system, and he said that the lifespan is undetermined, but when going bad the signal will be lost just as I had been having happen.

 

I am not saying that this is your problem as I believe that it is the storms as mentioned. I'm only passing along what information I garnered yesterday. I asked him how they could all be remanufactured given that the rate of new installs is exponential, and he really had no answer, only that is what he experienced.

 

This is in the States, also, so maybe things are different in Canada.

 

Roy

[Bernie]

Good point Terry.

[Guest lundboy]

I agree with everyone here in that satellites will lose their signal pretty much every time a storm passes through. But because of excessive dropped signals after I switched to the High Definition system a few months ago, I had a technician at the house to refocus the system for better signal strength. He was pretty forthright with me about my DishNetwork system.

 

With HD and local channels there are three receivers on the dish. One is for the local channels, one is primarily for the HD, and the last covers the rest of the channels. When swithing channels on the TV one or more of these may be in service. It seems that when channels are changed each of the receivers has a set of gears that move to refocus on any given satellite. The choices above are general, but not hard and fast as the company is moving new channels onto different satellites constantly.

 

Now, my point. He said that he has not worked with a new satellite dish or receiver in over two years. All of those that he installs are refurbished units, and he says that the quality is certainly substandard compared to new units. I asked him about a lifespan or symptoms of a malfunctioning system, and he said that the lifespan is undetermined, but when going bad the signal will be lost just as I had been having happen.

 

I am not saying that this is your problem as I believe that it is the storms as mentioned. I'm only passing along what information I garnered yesterday. I asked him how they could all be remanufactured given that the rate of new installs is exponential, and he really had no answer, only that is what he experienced.

 

This is in the States, also, so maybe things are different in Canada.

 

Roy

 

 

Dishnet is generally on 3 satellites (there are others though), 61.5W, 110W and 119W. HD is usually on 61.5W, The regular english programming is usually on 119W and 110W.

 

There are 3 common ways to get all three of these birds on one receiver (receiever meaning the box in the house that you remote control). An LNB (Low Noise Block Converter) is the squarish looking block that stands out on the pole in front of your dish.

 

-1 Oval Dish, 3 LNBs... Dish pointed at a specific location, and LNBs spread out in such a way to catch reflected signal at precise angle (Not so good, very hard to align for all sats, signal quality less than great for all sats)

 

-2 Dishes, 3 LNBs... One dish point mid way between 110, 119 with Two LNBs offset. One dish pointed at 61.5 with one LNB. (Good signal for 110,119... excellent signal for HD 61.5, easy to align)

 

Both of these solutions use an electronic switch which looks like a slightly bigger 4 way cable splitter. The receiver sends a code down the wire to switch on one switch port for whatever LNB is pointing at the sat you want to watch. The LNBs are stationary and pointed at each sat already.

 

-1 Dish, 1 LNB, One Motor... Dish is on a motor that will swing the dish/LNB to point at each satellite individually again by a code sent from the receiver. (Great Signal, relatively complicated to align dish/motor combo, slow channel changing if jumping between sats, not a good solution for very cold regions... motor freezes)

 

I haven't heard of official Dishnet installs using Motors. They have Superdish and Dish500 Dish1000 which they usually install using the first two scenarios.

 

Nothing moves after the initial installation, and there is nothing to focus.

 

Similar install for Bell, except Bell only has two Satellites 82W & 91W, again 1 dish two offset LNBs, one switch. This is the only configuration ExpressVu supports. All HD is on 82W on Bell, all locals are on on 91W.

Edited July 21, 2007 by lundboy

[Guest lundboy]

you have to remember that the signal is sent up to the sat. too so if it's raining hard where the uplink dish is, the signal will be weak coming back down

 

 

No signals are sent up to ExpressVu or Dishnet satelilites. They use a phoneline for hardware updates, and for pay-per-view ordering.

[Guest lundboy]

One thing to keep in mind when there's lightening in the area, is to unplug the system till it passes. We had a lightening strike in the park a couple years back and it blew out my dish and receiver box, even though the system is grounded with a lightening rod.

 

 

Absolutely! Or make sure that you have a really good powerbar that has spike protection with protection for a lot of kilojoules. It has to have protection inputs and outputs for sat cable in, phoneline in, and power. Make sure that whatever you buy has an Equipment Replacement Guarantee for enough to cover the cost of replacement of your equipment (including your hometheater amp, TV, and satellite equipment). Make sure you get it from a well known company.

 

That way if your stuff gets zapped while using the power bar, you can make a claim to the powerbar company to replace your equipment. (This works I had to do it once and they paid for the replacement of about $3000 worth!)

 

You will not get this type of powerbar for under $80.00

Edited July 21, 2007 by lundboy

[Terry]

yeah...I was talking about the signal to the sats from expressvu company so the signal can be sent down to you not from your home ird

I am sure most people know it's one way communication

 

so if it's uplinked from toronto and is pouring rain there, you can lose signal even thou it's not raining at your house in Newmarket

 

and I am sure you meant software updates not hardware

and they are sent by sat signal not phoneline

you can virgin the tsop hook it up to the dish and get full update without ever hooking up a phone line

same with the card, the phone line reads the PPV

Edited July 21, 2007 by Terry

[Guest lundboy]

yeah...I was talking about the signal to the sats from expressvu company so the signal can be sent down to you not from your home ird

I am sure most people know it's one way communication

 

so if it's uplinked from toronto and is pouring rain there, you can lose signal even thou it's not raining at your house in Newmarket

 

and I am sure you meant software updates not hardware

and they are sent by sat signal not phoneline

you can virgin the tsop hook it up to the dish and get full update without ever hooking up a phone line

same with the card, the phone line reads the PPV

 

 

You are correct! Another source of uplink signal failure is on each network feed (station CBS, Food Net, ESPN etc.) satellite as well, which could be anywhere in the world and this happens quite often. Funny thing is most people think that cable is far more stable, unfortunately they suffer from the same thing because almost all of their feeds are from satellite somewhere up the line, and in some cases they still rely on microwave repeaters in remote areas.

 

Incidentally in the case of Starchoice they can push SW config changes across a phone line... but it has to be triggered by the end user initiating the connection from the receiver (using hidden menu commands) while they are on the phone (you need to be on a second line) with a SC agent, had them do it for me once, because I moved the receiver to a new house and they installed a much newer dish/lnb which a profile did not exist in my receiver and it wouldn't pickup the updates from the dish and only horizontal channels. Can't see Bell not having this capability, they probably just never have to use it unless they ECM their own systems (by accident ) trying to prevent piracy in some way and usually they just roll a truck out with a new card, and at one time a new receiver.

Edited July 21, 2007 by lundboy