Because 129 is lower in the horizon and far to the right of where the dish appears to be pointed, people tend to get "tree fade". I fixed mine with a chain saw.
Signal Loss on HD channel, tuning to SD equivalent.
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What? we can't voice our opinions without being judged, He brings a good point about more signal loss in HD than SDI never really thought about it but you do raise a pretty good question there. I'm assuming they have good reason for it but maybe things should be changing since the majority of what people watch is in HD.
PS: You did come off "rant-ish," but it was a pretty good rant. Some might even say a ridiculous rant. All is forgiven.
and why it shouldn't be the other way around, of course SD loses signal also with heavy rain or snow.
To the OP, the vast majority of times I have seen this is due to the difficulty of keeping a strong signal on the 129 orbital, as many others have said. It's obviously the furthest to the west, and looking south, it's the furthest to the right and lower than the other ones. Due to this, you can get more atmospheric interference, more issues with trees, etc. When running tests, I'd usually find 129 shows red on the system info (Menu-6-1-3) screen, and 119/110 were okay. I don't recall ever troubleshooting that issue on someone with eastern arc (72.7/61.5 or 77/72/7/61.5) orbitals.
Chad, had that issue a few times myself. A lot of the older, long-time customers own their old receivers, and don't like to be told it's time to change. I had a customer with an old legacy receiver like that (she was calling with an 015), it was a 2000 or 3000 series (can't remember), and I offered the totally FREE upgrade. She refused to believe there was no catch. Was positive that owning a receiver was cheaper monthly than having a leased one (It's not...exact same cost). Did not want to believe me when I said there was no obligation (no lease agreement, no 24 month contract), and that the tech would come out for free. She had a local retailer she worked with, and she claimed he was unaware that a 2xxx receiver was obsolete. I told her he was welcome to call us, we'd gladly inform him it is. She turned down the tech visit, and said she'd contact her trusty local retailer. I was sort of shocked to think a retailer did not know her receiver was obsolete when she asked him.
As a Dish employee, my opinions are my own, and do not represent my employer in any way, shape, or form.
If one is tuned to the SD version of a channel and experiences signal loss, does the receiver toggle to the HD channel?
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Yes.
The system works pretty good as most storms here take out all 3 birds on the WA. Usually 129 is first, then 119 and finally 110. the toggling between birds keeps the outage to a minimum. Nothing to complain about that, although I agree, it would be better for HD customers to have the HD feeds on the strongest transponders.
I am in an RV with King Domes. I see this error all the time before the dome has a chance to change satellites. I would rather it didn't do it, but I don' t know of any way to prevent it. If I flip back to the HD channel (sometimes it takes more than one try), I can eventually get the HD channel.
This would be more of an error with the king dome. If they didn't do the "switching" message, then you would get complete signal loss until your done could reposition into the hd satellite. The domes can only look at a single satellite at a time. Have you though about upgrading the dome?
Not quite sure what you mean by 'upgrading'. If you mean changing to an open face dish, I have thought about it and for the moment rejected it. If that's not what you meant, can you explain further?
Do you mean the Trav'ler? The motor home came with a dome and I added a second one for the other tuner for only a couple of hundred dollars. Changing to a Trav'ler would be too expensive and would prevent me from using the in-motion feature (gets me XM Radio and other stations).
Absolutely. It only takes a second or two for the dome to find the correct satellite. It always gets to the HD channel unless the receiver decides to settle for the SD channel. It does the opposite, too. If I try to tune an SD station, it sometimes gives up and tries for the HD channel.
The point about 129 being farther west is a good one to remember to those who are farther from the west coast. As a sub on the west coast, I can say that 129 is very reliable and rarely has signal points less or much less than any of the other WA satellites. However, I do notice the loss of an HD or few HD channels that cause a switch to the SD channels, more often in the wee hours, ON OCASSION. On such occasions, the signal strength is fine,even quite strong. I believe Dish is tweaking with 129 to cram more channels (in fact, that was often what appeared a few days later) in and other experimentation. They can only add more HD to 110 and 129, as they have already, before they just can't anymore, and it becomes a game of cramming more at 129.
Also, Dish is really cramped for HD space, they may be running several transponders at 129 to the acceptable limit of FEC vs. power to cram in even more HD channels--not in the clear--and learning by experimentation the limits at the expense of the channels that are in the clear. This results NOT necessarily in a drop of the RF signal, but rather the loss of the packets, and a switch to SD for a very short period. Often I can re-tune to HD in less than a minute. Is an engineer tweaking about, and then notices the drop of picture, and then compensating to regain reception of the necessary packets in less than a minute? Hmmmm. I wonder? If Dish is going to cram more data on the already burdened transponders, then it means an adjustment in both FEC and power, and finding the right balance is not all just mathematical, but adjustments made by observing real-world effects.
Related to the above paragraph is my personal observation that the HD channels lately seem to suffer from a lack of luminance data. This is another trick to create more room for more channels on a xpndr. Dish blacks used to look really black and without "noise" distortion. For the last month or so, I have noticed that that black on the HD's is crushed rather badly, to the point that what should be black or a shadow in the foreground, simply lacks the data for display and the dark background is riddled with MPEG noise. This was NOT the case just a few months ago. In fact, one of the main reasons I would tout the Dish PQ quality was that it did NOT cheat on the luminance data to a point that it was detrimental. Now, is Dish cheating on Chromanace data, as well (as it so mercilessly does with the SD channels)? I can't tell by looking at it today, but I would not be surprised to see that go next. Of course, the audio is already provided less data, mostly on the non-premium channels. These are all places that any of the MVPD's go to reduce data without adding more compression to the overall picture, but to the elements, so the "crispness" of the PQ can be preserved. Yes, we can still see the wrinkles and the detail and patterns, but that black is just crushed and the sound isn't quite what it was, not too shabby, but still . . .
Well, I hope when the WA goes all 8PSK, we can see the return of black, at the very least. Although, I've gotten the notion from some at Dish that Dish may be going for all MPEG4 at the WA. I don't know if that is true, and AFAIK, Dish has only officially stated a change to all 8PSK at the WA. I've come across a few people who have had their recently changed out 8PSK boxes taken away and replaced with all MPEG4 equipment, unnecessarily, one would think, if Dish were going to change to 8PSK on the WA and NOT MPEG4. Let me know if Dish has OFFICIALLY stated an MPEG4 change for the WA.
Also, Dish is really cramped for HD space, they may be running several transponders at 129 to the acceptable limit of FEC vs. power to cram in even more HD channels--not in the clear--and learning by experimentation the limits at the expense of the channels that are in the clear. This results NOT necessarily in a drop of the RF signal, but rather the loss of the packets, and a switch to SD for a very short period. Often I can re-tune to HD in less than a minute. Is an engineer tweaking about, and then notices the drop of picture, and then compensating to regain reception of the necessary packets in less than a minute? Hmmmm. I wonder? If Dish is going to cram more data on the already burdened transponders, then it means an adjustment in both FEC and power, and finding the right balance is not all just mathematical, but adjustments made by observing real-world effects.
Related to the above paragraph is my personal observation that the HD channels lately seem to suffer from a lack of luminance data. This is another trick to create more room for more channels on a xpndr. Dish blacks used to look really black and without "noise" distortion. For the last month or so, I have noticed that that black on the HD's is crushed rather badly, to the point that what should be black or a shadow in the foreground, simply lacks the data for display and the dark background is riddled with MPEG noise. This was NOT the case just a few months ago. In fact, one of the main reasons I would tout the Dish PQ quality was that it did NOT cheat on the luminance data to a point that it was detrimental. Now, is Dish cheating on Chromanace data, as well (as it so mercilessly does with the SD channels)? I can't tell by looking at it today, but I would not be surprised to see that go next. Of course, the audio is already provided less data, mostly on the non-premium channels. These are all places that any of the MVPD's go to reduce data without adding more compression to the overall picture, but to the elements, so the "crispness" of the PQ can be preserved. Yes, we can still see the wrinkles and the detail and patterns, but that black is just crushed and the sound isn't quite what it was, not too shabby, but still . . .
Well, I hope when the WA goes all 8PSK, we can see the return of black, at the very least. Although, I've gotten the notion from some at Dish that Dish may be going for all MPEG4 at the WA. I don't know if that is true, and AFAIK, Dish has only officially stated a change to all 8PSK at the WA. I've come across a few people who have had their recently changed out 8PSK boxes taken away and replaced with all MPEG4 equipment, unnecessarily, one would think, if Dish were going to change to 8PSK on the WA and NOT MPEG4. Let me know if Dish has OFFICIALLY stated an MPEG4 change for the WA.
