For the past few months I’ve been “house sitting” (more or less, details aren’t important) during daytime weekdays at a relative’s house, and they have DirecTV satellite TV. I already knew moderate rain interrupted the signal (and know when has started minutes before it hits the ground because the signal goes out) but recently there has been new problems. Over the past week or two, I’ve lost channels in clear weather, but only certain channels and only at certain times of day. And it seems to be getting worse. For instance, a block of channels around channel 245 started dropping audio and video and eventually being lost entirely starting around 8 or 9 AM and lasting through the afternoon at least, but channels significantly above or below that (in the single digits, in the 300s) play fine. And the number of lost channels has been increasing–on Monday, 264 (reruns of Star Trek and Doctor Who) worked fine, but that channel has been gone for the last couple of days. And now I’m lost one channel in the early 300s (I think it was 307) but not another one (I think it was 30.) And I’m getting a few audio drop-outs on a channel in the mid-300s.
So I’m wondering if the time of year (I donno, something to do with the ionization of the atmosphere, position of the sun) could cause only channels to be lost while others remain, or if it is more likely something to do with the position of the dish, or possibly a hardware problem with the receiver? (When a channel is “blank”, there is a message displayed on-screen about loss of satellite signal.)
It does depend on the location to some degree, but moderate rain should not cause interuption. Get the DirecTV tech back out to reorient and to test the Dish. My DirecTV is up under anything but terrible conditions. Either the dish or the recievers is probably the problem.
Are the local units for each TV wired or wireless? Either could have a less likely chance of issues.
That the channels drop out by block also makes me think the dish is misaligned. One or more of the receiver/downconverters has been moved to the edge of its reception angle, so that every small gust of wind or atmospheric change makes it lose signal.
If your DirecTV dish is easily / safely accessible, you can save a service call. Our reception gradually deteriorated and dropped out often during rainy weather. Since we were able to self-test the block signal strengths on the video display, I slightly loosened the azimuth and vertical angle bolts and the tiniest tweak sent the signal strengths across-the-board from the mid 60’s / low 70’s to the high 90’s. Retightened the mount and ‘Bob’s your Uncle’ - 5 minute job. No more problems - most likely just the roof /house ‘adjusting itself’ over the years was the issue.
Are you in an area (like me) where foliage is finally starting to come in on the trees? And are there trees in direct line of sight from the dish to the sky?
You mean “Robert’s your father’s brother.” Got it straight from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels!
But yes, this kind of tweakage is pretty easy to do. Just have a voice link between someone watching the signal strength display and the poor mope adjusting the dish.
Didn’t think about trees. There are plenty of trees around (I’m in a significantly rural area) so I went outside to eyeball the line of sight for the dishes on the roof (there’s one dish for the TV signal and one dish for the internet signal) and noticed a limb from a mimosa tree was actually covering one of the dishes. As in, was in physical contact with the dish surface. So I broke off that limb, and it looks to have instantly solved the problem.
