The dishes are self-heating and cozy for the cats. Doesn’t help reception.
Use of available resources in a habitat is proof they will take over the world one day.
This is pretty old news, surprised its being reported as something new.
It’s not being reported as new; the dateline on the linked article is January 14, 2022.
“I’m on Starlink and all I can get is cat memes!”
I’m sure the cats are still doing it.
Now that you mention it, a few (very few) of my remaining neurons kicked in and I do have a vague remembrance. In my defense, I checked this thread and there was nothing in search.
Mods can remove the thread if desired.
I have Starlink, and don’t remember hearing about the cats.
I do know they are heated. A very nice feature.
You only need the warmth to melt snow, right? So, they should design them so that one can simply turn off the heating element when not needed. Once the cats see that the dishes are not emitting heat, they’ll give up and stop checking.
You can ‘stow’ or ‘park’ them which turns them vertical. You can do that remotely, no need to actually visit the dish. I kinda wonder why they have that feature. I live in snow country but snow is not an issue on this dish. I’ve had DirecTV and Hughes.net. I had to knock the snow off of those in the winter.
I suspect that a cat would block the signal so much that a user would notice. The ‘stow’ feature would also dump a cat off the dish.
On the contrary, it seems the cats were quite well-received.
I suspect you’re underestimating the average cat’s ability to seek the warm spot.
Ahhhhhhhhhh! Very clever! LOL
I have Direct TV streaming now but, before U-verse, I had Direct TV satellite. I remember having to step out on the slanted roof with a broom and brush the snow out. I had to be very careful not to slip and plunge to my demise in the process.
And even without a heater, that particular type of dish is a bowl. Cats love lying in bowls almost as much as boxes. And it’s elevated (another cat attractant) and out of the snow cover. If the dish is in sunlight, it may warm enough without a heating element for comfort.
Probably the best answer is to stow the dish once in a while to dump the kitties.
Never had to get on a roof to brush snow off dish, it was mounted on the side of the house. I duct taped a car snow brush to a 3/4" x 10’ copper pipe. Was always rewarded with a face full of snow.
Mine is only a dish in that it is round but it’s flat, not a bowl. Surprised me.
My cats sit on top closed laptops even when they are not on, it seems like remembered warmth it’s good enough for them.
Maybe it is flat. It looked bowl-like to me in the original picture, but at the RF band StarLink works at a flat dish is good.
But my cats will lie down on any surface which appears to be a distinct and enclosed area, even if it’s just a paper towel on the floor.
Cats also treat marking an area off on the floor as an enclosure to be sat in.
So the lack of actual containment (edges) is apparently not very important.
There are a lot of trees around the house, and they said the dish had to have a “clear view” of the south western sky. Thus the altitude.
Yeah, the dishes that point to geostationary satellites point to the south in the US. Got it to point between some very tall trees. The Starlink dish on my house points a little bit north. I put it as high as I could on my house because of the trees. The dish almost points straight up. Different locations will be different.
The dish finds the sats by itself. And so far as I can tell, it’s never moved.
Some spy satellite dishes have spherical plastic covers (‘golf balls’) which serve both to protect the dish from weather, and hide visually apparent features.
In the photo in the linked article, that tuxedo cat on the left looks like he’s saying, “So we’re messing up your reception? Well boo freaking hoo!”
AIUI, Starlink uses phased-array tech for communication with the satellites. That means the antennas are going to be flat rather than a parabolic dish. The satellites are in low earth orbit, so they’ll be moving across the sky, not in a fixed southern direction. The phased-array tracks the satellite without moving parts.