Satellite Television. If you have installed a new system in the last few years and live in a storm prone area

Question

How much problem do you have with the satellite reception going out?

We had satellite about five years ago, but went back to cable because during really bad storms our system would go down.

We were told there was nothing that could be done about it because of the storm causing the system to not recieve the signal.

Are systems now better and go out for this cause less frequently?

Since switching to cable we have never had a weather related outage.

Answer 1

Satellites will still go out if the weather gets heavy enough to block a signal, there is know way to prevent that from happening. Cable doesn't go out because you are alwayas hard lined into the signal. but to answer your question, satellites will not go out as often...takes really strong wind (which moves the dish) or really heavy rain.

Answer 2

LOL!! I have a FUNNY story about this... We lived in Florida for 3 years. We have always been satalite (dishnetwork) customers. During the time we lived there, we went through Hurricane Ivan. You would think that the dish, since it was on a pole that was buried in the ground, would have become a flying object with how hard the winds were blowing. We were about 30 miles from where the eye made landfall. And we were on the stronger side of the storm too - the right side. Anyway... make a long story short, the dish and pole were the only thing left standing in our yard!!!!!! All the pine trees fell, but not the dish! So when our neighbor brought us home a HumVee with a generator on the back (She was a reservist) we plugged our T.V. in and watched it!! There was NO problem. It didn't even have to be readjusted!

Now, here's the ironic part... Before that, when we would get heavy down pours on random days it would go out for a few minutes at a time.

I hate cable. had it for a few days when we moved to Cali, but switched back to DishNetwork. I'll never switch again!!!!

Answer 3

I have the same problem occasionally. My signal strength is high, so usually if it goes out, it will only be for a couple minutes. I live in Florida, so during hurricane season when the storms are worse, I have an addtl HD antenna hooked up, so I at least have local stations to watch when the dish goes out for longer periods of time. I have a huge problem with my local cable company, so will never go back to them. During one hurricane, when I had both DTV and cable, my satellite was back up and running after two days. My cable was out for two weeks. Terk makes an antenna that you attach to your dish. I had one of these once and it worked okay. It doesn't work as well as other outdoor antennas, but it is very easy to install.

Answer 4

Our Dish system is about 6 years old and it only goes out at the most intense part of a bad storm.

For us, this is far better than the outages we used to have with cable -- our old cable company couldn't keep the signal up and clear even with a tiny little drizzle, and was clueless and unresponsive when we'd call the problem in. (And it's also better up-time than we have with our local telco landline.)

Answer 5

I have Direct tv, and when It rain I get no reception. But in a snow storm, My reception never goes. Figure that one out.. So I have the newest Hi def receiver, and yester day we had a bad thunderstorm, and it still went out.