Problem receiving local stations when traveling

[JoshM]

We live in Albany, Oregon, which is about 60 miles south of Portland, and we receive the local Portland stations on DirecTV.

This Spring & Summer we'll be spending a lot of time at a place my inlaws have in Bandon, which is on the southern Oregon coast. This place also has a DirecTV dish - the very same model of dish we have at home.

So, I brought our DirecTV receiver with us to Bandon, plugged it into the dish, and was pleased to see it worked perfectly... except for the Portland stations. They come in terribly... *unless* it's early in the morning or late at night. They come in great at those times, but not at all during the day. So obviously this is a reception issue, and not a matter of DirecTV blocking me from receiving Portland stations so far out of the Portland area.

I called DirecTV, and the best they could suggest was that maybe we were just too far out of range to get the stations reliably. They didn't even think a dish alignment would help.

Does this sound right? Is it possible that traveling a couple hundred miles southwest from Albany would make it impossible to receive Portland stations? Do the Portland stations "live" on a satellite that just hovers over the Portland area, and is impossible to lock into if you're on the coast? This seems unlikely to me. In fact, I'd be surprised if the Portland stations were on a different bird than the Eugene stations (which is what you get if you sign up for DirecTV in Bandon). But I could easily be wrong about that.

Bottom line, I guess I'm wondering if it's worth the expense of having an installer come & align the dish (which receives everything *perfectly* except for the Portland stations), or if it's true that where we are is just too far away from the Portand satellite to ever get those stations reliably.

 

[ClemSole]

They are on what is called "spot beams" which means they are only avilable in a limited area, so where you are in Bandon you are on the outter edege of the signal area so depending on the time of day you may or may not receive them, the sun can shorten the outer edeges of the signal.

Look on D*'s web sight and you can see what locals are in that area, if any, but sence you are traveling you will not be able to receive any others on your receivers.

 

[JosephB]

As ClemSole said they are on what's called spotbeams. They are on the same satellite, but the signal for a given set of locals is only broadcasted to it's area and sometimes a limited area nearby. This allows DirecTV to reuse the same frequencies for locals across the country, since they have a limited amount of them to use nationwide.

 

[texasbrit]

Think of the spotbeams as being flashlight beams coming down from the satellite, each beam pointing at a different area. If you are not in the flashlight beam, you won't receive the channels.
Legally speaking, DireCTV can't deliver locals to you when you are out of your local DMA anyway, which is one reason why they use spotbeams. The other, as josephB pointed out, is that by using spotbeams they can use the same frequency for a channel say in Boston as they do for one in San Francisco. If it were not for that, there would be no way DirecTV could deliver locals without using many more satellites.
Aligning your dish is not going to change any of this.