I’ve been having this problem for a couple years now. Every hot spell we get, I start losing some of the channels from Direct TV.
Last year I thought it was related to solar flares which Direct TV denied. Tech support has been anything but helpful.
Does this happen to anyone else?
Any idea what could be causing it, or better yet what I might try to fix it?
It seems to be directly related to the sun and possibly heat. On cooler days it doesn’t start until around noon and clears up around 3 or 4. On hot days 90+ it starts around 10 am and will continue until 5pm or so. Equally frustrating in the diagnosis, is the fact that only some channels are affected, others are fine.
I heard of rain fade, but not sun fade. What is your signal strength? It should be the 70-90 range depending on where you live. Go to your system’s set-up menu to find out.
You can have something funky like a dish that is warping when it gets hot, but I doubt that.
You are probably getting a marginal signal and need to align your dish. You can do this yourself if you have easy access to the dish. Set the IRD to the set-up menu that shows the signal strength. Get a buddy to sit in front of the TV. Loosen the nuts that used for adjustment and move it left or right about 2 degrees. You signal will go up or down. Continue moving the dish sideways until you get the maximum strength. Then adjust up and down for maximum strength.
Jim
I have had Direct TV for 4 years, and despite many problems, I never had this one. Could it be, that the heat is affecting whatever your dish is mounted on? It seems DTV dishes are very sensitive to movement, and the smallest of movements send some channels out of whack. Perhaps the heat is causing expansion/movement on whatever the dish is mounted to. I used to have a dish mounted on the base of a large tree (it was the clearest shot) and it worked fine, in all but the smallest winds. Small winds, small problems, big winds, forget it. However, in small winds, the tree appeared to be steady as a rock. It still screwed up the reception. It didn’t clear up until I affixed it to the house. Perhaps moving the dish to a shaded area will help.
I originally thought it was a signal strength problem, but it is a strong 89. It is the same as when I initially installed it 4 or 5 years ago.
The signal strength does drop during the episodes I described but it come back up as soon as the sun starts to go down. I have tried to re-adjust it when the problem occurs but can’t get a better signal.
The dish is mounted to the base of a large tree, but I have never had problems with wind, even gale force wind. I had trees blow down around it last winter and never lost a signal at all.
Another possible factor is that I have a large mountain right in front of the house and I don’t clear it by much in a direct line to the satelite. Could it be a refraction problem?
Here’s a wild ass guess, but is it possible, if the antennae is angled low enough relative to the roof, that the ‘heat effect’ (What are those things that cause Oasis’s to occur in the desert?) is causing degradation to the signal?
Here is an example of how hit and miss it is in the movie channels only. I can’t get channels 500-519, do get 520 and 523 but not 521 and do get 526-533.
How about trying this: During a time when the signals are bad, take a small plastic bag or hot-water bottle filled with ice out and tie it to the feed assembly on your dish (tie it to the side opposite the side that points toward the dish). There could be a heating problem in the electronics in the feed assembly. Go back inside and see if there is any improvement. If so, a replacement feed is in order.