Western arc spot beam for Houston narrowed?

[MikeD-C05]

My parents have had Houston locals for years. I "moved " them there so they could get hd before our area got them on the networks. They live in Pt.Arthur ,Texas which is 90 miles from Houston. Last week they called me to say that they kept losing their hd locals and it was turning to the sd equivalent. Sometimes at night they would come in but go out again in the morning hours.We had the Sd channels on lock out , so no locals at all during the daytime.

I checked and changed out the lnb, the separator since they had the 722k and the diplexor since we had the sat and ota diplexed to their receiver. Also check to make sure that there were no channels locked out ,even in the higher 6000 range for their locals. We did reboots , power, red button and ran a check switch run and it confirmed good signal on all three sats. After doing all this I still couldn't get the hd locals to come in. The spotbeam for 110 sat on transponder 4 never came in. All the other sats were peaked for the best signal , just the spotbeam didn't seem to come in.

After talking to the dish tech for like 20 minutes and he wanted to replace the receiver . I said no way and I asked him to change them to Beaumont, Pt.Arthur ,Tx locals to check and see if the hd locals worked for them. He changed the locals and sure enough they hd locals worked fine. So I knew it wasn't the receiver. We changed it back to Houston and did a rehit and reboots etc. Still the Hd signal low ,turning to sd equivalent. So I asked him did they narrow the spotbeam area covered on the western arc? He said he couldn't comment, but that they were moving things around up there with the mpeg 4 conversion. So I said well I have eastern arc 1000.4 sat dish and Houston locals and I still got them just fine. So I had to assume that this was the only other reason why they lost only their hd locals. So we ended up changing back to Beaumont,Pt.Arthur locals and changing their service address to what it really was. At ;east they got all their networks in hd. They weren't happy because they wanted both cities news : Houston on sat and Beaumont on their ota tuner.

I have since ordered a new eastern arc lnb for the 1000.2 sat dish and I am supposed to get it next Tuesday from dishdepot.com. I will install it on my 1000.2 sat dish at home and get it peaked and then take it to my parents house to switch out their dish and then re-aim and peak it for their house. Then I can change them back to Houston locals. They really wanted Houston locals and were not happy because they couldn't watch that cities news. I never watched Houston news ,because it is a little more violent and scary compared to our area and I don't have the time. But my parents are retired and have all the time in the world to watch it. So I hope that the eastern arc doesn't narrow their spotbeam too for Houston , or they will be right back to their own city again.

 

[boba]

Have you thought about the Mexican cure? Put up a larger dish to catch the spot beam. If they got it overnight they weren't too far off signal wise.

 

[garys]

It could be a slight alignment problem.

 

[MikeD-C05]

Have you thought about the Mexican cure? Put up a larger dish to catch the spot beam. If they got it overnight they weren't too far off signal wise.

No, because they have had Houston locals for years. This is on DISH's side. They have obviously changed the area the spotbeam covered. It used to cover about 100 miles out of Houston and now it is not reaching as far. My parents are like 73 miles from Baytown ,which is another 20 miles from Houston. If the eastern arc works with the new dual lnb for the 1000.2 sat dish, then it will be fine. I know the 1000.4 sat dish with the original triple lnb works, since I've had it in place since 08. Will find out next weekend if the new dual with the 1000.2 sat dish does work.

 

[MikeD-C05]

It could be a slight alignment problem.

The dish hasn't changed since 08 when I re-installed it after Hurricane Ike came through and they always had at least 50- 57 strength on the spotbeam. The dish hasn't moved and the only stations affected were the locals . All other sat stations were still at the same strengths I had when I installed it again in 08. I keep the sat strengths for each sat in a notebook for both my accounts . Besides the receiver kept saying : Low strength on HD signal , turning to Sd equivalent. My mom and dad said it would come in during late night and drop out in the morning. Either way a new sat dish install next weekend should fix the problem ,unless they decide to narrow the focus of the eastern arc spotbeam too. I do believe that with the mpeg4 conversion of the western arc, there are changes occurring on the satellites. After all they are trying to fit more hd up there and who knows? They may try to restrict the Houston locals to just eastern arc in time. They might need that transponder on 110 sat for something else.

 

[TheKrell]

do believe that with the mpeg4 conversion of the western arc, there are changes occurring on the satellites.

8PSK conversion?

 

[MikeD-C05]

8PSK conversion?

That is what the dish tech hinted at. He said they were doing the 8psk conversion and turning off the older mpeg 2 receivers on western arc and moving channels around on the western arc to make room for more hd. He wouldn't say that they spotbeams were changed or not ,but that it could very well be a factor since the conus beams were still coming in at the same consistent strengths as before . I mean I changed out everything from the lnb to the separator and the diplexor and the only thing different were the main locals in hd.

 

[Hall]

How often are the spotbeam maps updated ? Does someone calculate their coverage or is this something that Dish has to provide to some gov't entity (the FCC ?).

 

[MikeD-C05]

That I don't know. But the only person I remember who had spot beam maps was James Long of the Dbstalk website ,which I don't go to anymore. Of course his original maps are probably out of date by now.