Irritating Inteference! Need help desperately

[sedativechunk]

Hello, everyone! I've been having trouble with my satellite the past week and found alot of answered questions on this site through Google. I haven't seen anyone post a question for the exact problem I've been having so I figured I would sign up myself and see if anyone could help me.

My family has had DirecTV for over 6 years now and we've never had any problems signal wise up until recently. The past week, our signal on all 4 receivers in our house (standard receivers, no HD or DVR) has been breaking up. What happens is, every couple of minutes, maybe 3 to 10 minutes apart, the signal on all TV's breaks up and makes a loud pop noise out of the speakers for about a half a second to two seconds. The picture breaks up into digital distortion and then goes back to normal. Now this is where things start to get weird.
Whenever it happens, the lights in the house flicker. I've had all the power boxes in the house checked and nothing is hot or shorted out. The cables on the satellite receivers are all plugged in good and I don't know what's doing it. Now here's what is even more weird about this situation.

When I use my Xbox 360 or put the television on cable, it doesn't do it. Only with the Satellite, but the power still flickers. It's very annoying and I'm very worried and stressed about it and have no where else to turn. I've called DirecTV customer support and they guided me through the troubleshooting process checking the "dish pointing" and the signal strength for the connection to the satellite. Everything appears to be in order but somethings wrong.
Can anyone here help me? Why is my signal breaking up? And why does the power flicker when it does? Could it be the selectorswitch for the satellite signal or something worse? Should I resort to having a technician come out and check everything out?

 

[Jimbo]

Hello, everyone! I've been having trouble with my satellite the past week and found alot of answered questions on this site through Google. I haven't seen anyone post a question for the exact problem I've been having so I figured I would sign up myself and see if anyone could help me.

My family has had DirecTV for over 6 years now and we've never had any problems signal wise up until recently. The past week, our signal on all 4 receivers in our house (standard receivers, no HD or DVR) has been breaking up. What happens is, every couple of minutes, maybe 3 to 10 minutes apart, the signal on all TV's breaks up and makes a loud pop noise out of the speakers for about a half a second to two seconds. The picture breaks up into digital distortion and then goes back to normal. Now this is where things start to get weird.
Whenever it happens, the lights in the house flicker. I've had all the power boxes in the house checked and nothing is hot or shorted out. The cables on the satellite receivers are all plugged in good and I don't know what's doing it. Now here's what is even more weird about this situation.

When I use my Xbox 360 or put the television on cable, it doesn't do it. Only with the Satellite, but the power still flickers. It's very annoying and I'm very worried and stressed about it and have no where else to turn. I've called DirecTV customer support and they guided me through the troubleshooting process checking the "dish pointing" and the signal strength for the connection to the satellite. Everything appears to be in order but somethings wrong.
Can anyone here help me? Why is my signal breaking up? And why does the power flicker when it does? Could it be the selectorswitch for the satellite signal or something worse? Should I resort to having a technician come out and check everything out?

Welcome to the site !

I'm thinking it could be two un related issues that just happened to happen at the same time.

It's been 6 years now, have you checked to see if any trees have started to grow into the signal area ?

Have you had your House Ground checked, if your lights flicker, this could be something very serious.
Have you addd anything lately that could be drawing more power from the same circuit that the D and other things may be on ?

 

[sedativechunk]

Welcome to the site !

I'm thinking it could be two un related issues that just happened to happen at the same time.

It's been 6 years now, have you checked to see if any trees have started to grow into the signal area ?

Have you had your House Ground checked, if your lights flicker, this could be something very serious.
Have you addd anything lately that could be drawing more power from the same circuit that the D and other things may be on ?

Thanks for responding! We do live in the middle of the woods in Pennsylvania and we were wondering the same thing about trees over the hill's interfering. Maybe we could move the dish on top of the house instead of the garage where we have it now as it would be higher up.
My dad checked the ground today at least for the Satellite dish itself and it was fine. He's the one that wired our whole house years ago and he says the wiring is all fine.

As for the boxes being plugged into the same thing, that is a definite possible cause. The problems started last week and it started electrical. The vacuum, big air conditioner, two big TV's, and computers were running at the same time. Lately, theres been alot of shorts and power outages when all over those devices run at the same time and now the satellite boxes have all been having this issue since that happened.
I don't know much about the grounding for the house, but I will have my father check it out tomorrow. I know it's ridiculous to have all that stuff running at once, but it's not me, it's the other people living here sucking up the power! I only run a TV and computer with the satellite box most of the time in my room. I considered having an extra main line run separate for the air condition and TV but it's alot of work. With these issues, though, I may be forced to do that now.

Again, thanks for the response and I would love to hear back on what you or anyone else here things it is.

 

[cfb]

Sounds to me like you're having a momentary brownout. Either that or you've developed a serious electrical problem inside the home.

Try putting a cheap UPS on one of the directv boxes and see if that one becomes unaffected when the next blip happens.

If the homes power drops below ~90 volts, the receiver will momentarily lose its ability to lock the signal. And your lights will flicker. Cheap power supply. Tivo's lose their brains pretty well when you let their line voltage drop under 90 volts too.

If its ALL the lights in the house and nobody else in your neighborhood is having flickering light issues, could be your electric service main or main breaker. Call your power company to ask if they're having brownouts in your area.

I have a pretty good UPS on my main receiver. It records all voltage sags and spikes and you can query it from a PC. We have pretty good power here, but its amazing how much things roll around in the middle of a really hot day or during a storm.

 

[MikeinBaja]

Don't skimp on $ to have the wiring checked - ensuing fire could kill you.

If the whole place is browning down, the problem probably isn't your sat box. Get it checked today (not tomorrow).

 

[Joe Diamond]

Take a look at your ground rod. IF an installer removed the ground clamp from the rod six years ago there may be corrosion and or a loose clamp. Don't screw around with the clamp or ground,,,they could be live from shorts elsewhere. Just look or have an electrician start there.

Or it could be electric company voltage problems as mentioned.....seasonal brown out? Maybe!

Joe