Thanks, and a final question (or two)

[Piratefan98]

I really appreciate all of the people who've helped me as I continue to consider a switch from Comcast to DirecTV (for more HD channels). I've gotten lots of answers to a variety of questions, and I thank everyone who took the time to help me.

Over the past few days, I've spent several hours reading threads here (and at AVS Forum), and my final concerns/questions deal with a couple topics that seem to repeat quite a bit. Those subjects include "rain fade", and "out of sync audio". As I am typing this, it is raining like hell here in PA, and I'm wondering if I will (as many others seem to) have to deal with times where the weather prevents reception from being very good. Also, the whole out-of-sync audio worries me a lot, because it seemed to be theme discussed by several people in several different threads .... and not just one kook with an equipment problem.

Just curious if the long-time DirecTV experts here consider things like rain fade and out of sync audio to be real issues or isolated cases. And if they do happen, is there any remedy or recourse with the company. Thanks again!

Jeff

 

[Cincyray]

Piratefan im also in Pa i live in Reading Pa i switched from comcast to Dish 2 Years ago with no regrets Comcast bites, Then i switched from Dish to Direct in December again with no regrets i like Direct better than Dishl.


With dish i had a lot of rain fade with dircet i have had hardley any.

 

[Hemi 6.1]

I'm in North East Pa,and I've not had any issue from rain or snow, ICE sometimes can make you lose your signal,but nothing a little hot water won't take care of. Or a supersoaker for them hard to reach places,Like Roof. It works don't Laugh! Thunderstorms may also cause an outage,But the most is about 10 minutes from what I've seen. And most of the time all my equipment is unplugged anyway,so i don't even notice. Enjoy!

 

[Hemi 6.1]

With dish i had a lot of rain fade with dircet i have had hardley any.

I can back up this statement as well. I have both Directv with the 5lnb Slimline and Dishnetwork with 2 dish 500 one pointed at the 110/119 and one pointed at the 61.5.The 61.5 hangs on for a few extra seconds,but not much. Dish is out first everytime,and last to come back on as well. And sometimes Dish is out and Directv not at all. I think its because Dishnetworks satellite are lower in the sky,Thats the reason I can think of,since its the same as when I had my Direct Phase III dish as well.

 

[jcrandall]

In my years with satellite I've had less rain fade than I've had days where the cable would just go out. Sunny day, car crash, no cable for 3 days...

Never happens like that on satellite. Rain fade, may last a few minutes in a peak storm, then back to normal.

 

[BluegrassGuy1976]

If the dish is aligned correctly rain fade should be at a minimum. It WILL happen if it gets really nasty, no way around it.

As for the audio sync issues.... Yes it is an issue that is being worked on. From what we techs have been told (and I've done some reading on it as well) it occurs mostly on the HD MPEG4 locals. The reason? For years and years TV broadcasting systems have always been set up so that the picture signal transmits out, then a second later the audio broadcasts out, so that when both tranmissions reach the end-user they are in perfect timing and synchronziation. Either the picture transmits faster or the audio does I forget exactly which. But they have to intentionally lag one of them behind the other from the broadcast source so they arrive at your house together, at the same time. The broadcasters have sophiscated timing equipment that is set up to do this.
With the arrival of HD and higher bandwidth capacities, some of these broadcasters STILL haven't updated their broadcasting equipment or re-worked their timing equipment because the transmission timing changed when they started broadcasting an HD signal and it is causing problems. Part of is DirecTv too, and again it is a timing issue. From the broadcast soure to us, from us to the sateliites and then back down again. Is it being worked on by Engineering however.