Help Please - Dish Issues and/or Snow (HD TiVo)

[sgupta]

Hey all,

Having a bit of a perplexing problem. This is my first Winter with DirecTV (well, one or two snows last year, but not enough to really know). So when we got our first major snowstorm, I was pleasantly surprised that at the time the dish performed well and I got no dropouts.

Unfortunately, after the storm, the problems began. The dish iced up and I lost signal. Now it's on my roof, and I can't quite reach it, so I used a shovel (for the reach) to get the snow and some of the ice off of it, which seemed to work (and I was careful not to hit it too hard or anything, but I did tap it a bit).

Things were fine for a day or two and seemed back to normal when it warmed up the other day. I may try a spray-on solution and if that doesn't work the trashbag idea (and if that doesn't work, maybe consider a heated dish).

However tonight, it's quite warm here with very little precipitation (light rain), and I'm having issues again. (I will note there are quite high winds at the moment though.) HD seems to come in perfect, but on the standard channels, I'm getting 1 or 2 second dropouts occaionally. Sometimes it's just pixellation or sound distortion. Other times it displays the Looking For Satellites 1 & 2 message, but only for an instant, then things are back.

I checked satellite signal, and both seem pretty good. (I get early 90's on both satellite A and B but only mid-80's on C; I also wanted to know if that was normal).

Thanks for any advice.

Also, for those of you with the equipment protection plan, does it cost anything if I want to have DirecTV come and take a look at it, and does it take long for them to act on a maintenance request?

Thanks!

 

[sgupta]

Oh, want to stress the high winds again. We're getting very heavy gusts (up to 35 mph or thereabouts) at the moment, and it's seeming more and more the problem *may* be happening when a gust comes along, though that doesn't exactly explain why HD isn't having this problem - just SD...or why it's never seemed to happen before on windy days. Maybe something's loose?

 

[jdk]

I hear a super-soaker filled with warm water can work well in clearing off ice from a dish.

I have no personal experience. I live in an area where if it snows three flakes, we'll talk about it for the next ten years.

 

[sgupta]

LOL. That's actually a pretty good suggestion. I'll think about that. A supersoaker would reach.

Now today, it's been raining on and off heavily with less wind, and I haven't experienced the dropouts yet. This is really odd. I don't know whether to try to have DirecTV look at it or not.

 

[hdtvtechno]

Hey all,



Also, for those of you with the equipment protection plan, does it cost anything if I want to have DirecTV come and take a look at it, and does it take long for them to act on a maintenance request?

Thanks!

No its all free.

Second if you never had this problem before, then you might want to try to get the channelmaster Gainmaster Directv antenna
Shown here

or depending on your area, get the new 5 LNB dish

Or I think you moved the dish with the shovel when you were getting the snow off the dish

You might want to give directv a call and let them come and take a look at it.
if they came, and find nothing, then i suggest you to try those new dishes i mentioned above.

Good luck

 

[sgupta]

Thanks a lot for the response. Those Gainmaster dishes look great. One question I would have is if DirecTV will install them (I'm guessing that's a no, and I wouldn't want to try this myself.).

I may have DirecTV come and take a look at the dish then. Thanks for the heads up. Since it's been less windy, things have been much better though...so it may be okay afterall, though I still don't understand why wind gusts affeted my signal so much.