Dish, trees & cable woes - Seeking Advice

[CRFTony]

I have been an extremely happy Dish customer for the past 7 or so years. I had the Everything package and loved pretty much everything. My property and the properties surrounding me have lots and lots of trees. I occasionally had issues when the leaves came out with signal loss and last year a tech moved my main dish and the signal was pretty awesome after that. Over the winter, someone crashed into the dish and when the new tech came out to put it back in, he aligned it properly but didn't have to deal with any of the issued cause by the foliage since there was none. Sure enough, this spring the leaves came out and the signal was terrible. Two satellites weren't showing up at all and I had almost no HD, especially on locals. I called to have a tech come out and he did so on Monday. Well, he re pointed the dishes, but as soon as he did so, the signal was dramatically worse and almost nothing was coming in. He said due to the trees, there was nothing he could do. He actually told me to cancel my service and download everything from the pirate bay. I called his supervisor and mentioned how bad the signal was and the supervisor said to just watch SD and that they weren't going to make any extra effort to get the HD signal back. I was pretty upset and ended up cancelling my Dish service.

I reluctantly went to Comcast, who is my local cable provider. The sales agent talked up how great they were, all of the xfinity on demand options, etc. I scheduled the install and they came out Wednesday. Well, for the past 2 days I've been trying to get on demand working with my tivo without any luck. Finally a tech told me that on demand isn't available in my area. And I know this is a "small" issue, but I don't even get Showtime in HD in this area. How crazy is that? I'm completely regretting going with cable and wondering if there is any other way to make Dish or even Directv work. I would happily allow them to put a dish on the roof, on a tree, anywhere if it would just work. Any ideas or advice? My address, if that helps, is xxxxxxxx, Friedens, PA 15541

 

[TheKrell]

Top the errant tree!

If you have a smartphone, you might buy the Dishpointer augmented reality app, and walk around your property to see if you find a hole for your arc. Is it Eastern Arc by the way?

 

[Scherrman]

May need to put the dish on a tripod on the roof. While up north fishing last week I saw a dish mounted on top of a light pole so it could point over the bluff. Would hate to service that thing.

 

[Voyager6]

I have been an extremely happy Dish customer for the past 7 or so years. I had the Everything package and loved pretty much everything. My property and the properties surrounding me have lots and lots of trees. I occasionally had issues when the leaves came out with signal loss and last year a tech moved my main dish and the signal was pretty awesome after that. Over the winter, someone crashed into the dish and when the new tech came out to put it back in, he aligned it properly but didn't have to deal with any of the issued cause by the foliage since there was none. Sure enough, this spring the leaves came out and the signal was terrible.

Obviously after the crash, the dish was not placed in the same spot as before. I would suggest relocating the dish to the same spot that you were receiving good signal from.

 

[Stargazer]

When someone receives signal one year and it gets blocked the next year due to leaves, most of the time there are particular branches that can be cut which can bring your signals back. You could try to point towards the other arc (there are two arcs of satellites, eastern and western). You could take a picture of where the dish is pointing for an opinion on here, sling content from a friend's house or try Directv as they have different satellites which may have an open space between the trees.

 

[navychop]

Let us know what you try.


Posted Using The New SatelliteGuys Reader App!

 

[dvrexpander]

Cut the tree's... I tell people this time and time again as a Tech. You roll out and tell them that a tree is now in the way of 1 or 2 sats on the WA which is typical around here to use and they look at me like deer in headlights. That's right I told you to CUT THE DARN TREE!!! I won't move a dish if it looks like its going to cost me more than what I'm going to make so as a customer also I will take the needed steps since I own the property and remove what needs to be removed and as a tech I'll tell you to take those steps. Just cut the whole thing down or pay someone to top the tree.


Oh and a Mod needs to remove your address...no need to have that posted here.

 

[dfergie]

Got it, Thanks for the heads up!