Satellite in the Northeast?

May 23, 2005 10:24 AM

I am looking into getting cable television and DirecTV seems to be the cheapest route. I'm worried about the dish getting knocked out of service range during bad weather, though. Does anyone have any experience with satellite dishes in less than desirable climates? (I live in Baltimore, MD.)
posted by amandaudoff to technology (12 comments total)

Our is on the windward side of the house in a place that has received 60+ mph wind gusts several times since we had it installed. No problems. Only issue is when it rains really hard, i.e. can't see across the street it's raining so hard, we lose reception for about 2 minutes but that's it.
posted by karmaville at 10:32 AM on May 23, 2005

I had satellite for a few years in Michigan... the ONLY time it would go out would be during a very bad thunderstorm or outright blizzard, and this would be for a few minutes to perhaps 10 minutes at best...took a heck of a storm and I usually had other things to worry about than missing a few minutes of tv!

Much less prone to outages than the cable I now have (too many trees on my lot to get a signal) which gets knocked out whenever the weather looks like it might be anything but sunny...and will be out until some lazy tech gets out and tapes the wires back together...

Do keep the dish in a location, if possible, that you can get the snow out of it if there is any accumulation...although this wasn't often a problem for me..
posted by HuronBob at 10:33 AM on May 23, 2005

Remember all those hurricanes that came through Florida last year? Yeah, that's right were I live, just about exactly where the paths of Charlie and Frances crossed. For each of the three hurricanes that came through I had fine reception up until about two hours before the actual storm crossed -- basically once the real storm squalls started coming through I would lose reception. (That's also about the point I would bring my dish inside, since I am in an apartment and the dish is only held in place by a cinder block). After the storm I would put the dish back out, aim it, and had perfect reception.

So yeah, it doesn't work when there is an actual hurricane passing overhead, but other than that the reception is fine. And honestly, when there is a hurricane blowing outside you really aren't spending quality time catching up on your soaps.
posted by Lokheed at 10:37 AM on May 23, 2005

I'm in southeast Michigan. We've had DirecTV for about a year and have had no problems with the dish being jostled around by bad weather (it does get gusty during the summer sometimes with tornado-favorable weather), but the signal can go out when things are very rainy or very snowy. I'm not sure if the local channels go out in these circumstances as I'm not sure how they're delivered.

We have the Total Choice Plus package with local channels and I'm pretty satisfied with it. I can live with the signal going out during rain... the only thing I dislike is the lack of local weather (the version of the Weather Channel they have is the "national version" ... when it gets to "Local on the 8s," it just switches into a generic national forecast of metro centers across the country.) According to this, however, that may be changing soon.

Price-wise, though, it was much better than Comcast's Digital Cable packages were at the time. I haven't checked since, maybe they're better now, but I'm not really interested. :)
posted by Kosh at 10:40 AM on May 23, 2005

amandaudoff:

Those ku band dishes like dishnetwork and DirectTv use are made of solid steel.

They're screwed down w/four big screws, and bolted into alignment.

I've never had one slip out of alignment unless I loosened it myself.

-------------------------------------------------------
Cable Providers want you to be scared of this:

"Rain Fade - Bad weather can cause you to lose your satellite reception. Satellite dishes can experience interference problems known as "rain fade". Rain or high winds can block a DBS signal or push a dish out of alignment. Because your Time Warner Cable connection is a direct link, you won’t experience these reception problems."
source

But it's nothing to be scared of:

"Ridiculous....lol...BIG storm,then it won't matter what U were watching!...satellite stays up as long as cable in any weather,and its quality is as good or better and the price usually much cheaper..a good installation (very simple to do)with good cable wiring,connectors,and dish alignment will keep satellite up in almost the worse of weather..mine stayed up in 4 hurricanes last year,except a few minutes here and there...."
source
posted by drakepool at 10:49 AM on May 23, 2005

About a third of British homes have satellite dishes (hardly anyone has cable), and here they're completely reliable and no one worries about the weather affecting them. Mine occasionally breaks up for a few seconds, and I'm not even sure that's weather related. It's mostly a fallacy spread by the US cable companies (I saw an awful, desperate TWC ad when I was over last summer).
posted by cillit bang at 10:54 AM on May 23, 2005

I also live in Baltimore and the only reason I didn't go with satellite over cable is that DSL isn't available in my area (Mt. Washington). Otherwise, satellite is a much better deal and seems to have more programming options.
posted by electroboy at 11:40 AM on May 23, 2005

Works great here in the hills in Western Massachusetts. Only occasional weather outages, and those are more often as a result of bad weather near the DirecTV uplinks, rather than here at home.

One tip: spray the dish with Pam or some other sort of non-stick cooking spray. It'll help keep ice from forming and screwing with your signal.
posted by Framer at 12:02 PM on May 23, 2005

Amanda. I'm in Baltimore. I've got Directv and have for about a year. My neighborhood is wooded and my satellite has a less than clear view of the sky, mostly clear. I don't know that during the last year we didn't have one outage that can be attributed to weather.
posted by TuxHeDoh at 12:15 PM on May 23, 2005

We've had DirecTV in Boston for 3 years now, and I can remember maybe 2 or 3 times the signal got a little scrambled during extreme weather (usually rain, oddly we've never had trouble with snow). The digital cable we had before certainly went out more than that during a similar span, and cost twice as much for a similar channel line-up.

Satellite would need to be far, far more unreliable for us to even consider cable again.
posted by jalexei at 12:16 PM on May 23, 2005

Friends of mine in rural Ohio have DirecTV and have had no problems with it.

I have Sky satellite tv in the UK and it's fine. The only thing that affected it was a tree in a neighbour's garden. The dish was installed in the winter. When the leaves grew, the reception broke up and I ended up having to have the dish on an 8ft pole to clear the treeline. Then the neighbour cut down the tree ...

And, as others have said, rain seems to affect the signal worse than wind.
posted by essexjan at 12:39 PM on May 23, 2005

If you have a problem with rain fade, get a larger dish.

For under $100 you should be able to get a 30" dish. There is no storm you will want to be watching TV during that will cause DBS rain fade on a dish that side. You'll be in the basement covering yourself with a mattress at that point.

A properly installed mount in brick will hold an amazing amount of weight. I weigh about 260 lbs and test my installations by checking if the mount can hold my weight. :-) A word to the wise: Don't use tapcon/concrete screws. Lag bolts /w lag sheild are far more effective and are no more difficult to install.

Fun fact: Cable providers get a lot of their TV services from satellite. If rain fade is going to affect satellite reception, then the cable station is going bye bye too. :-)

If you are worried about snow/ice accumulation, you can buy a dish heater. I run a store in an area where it does snow during winter and I've never sold one -- they aren't necessary. Oh, and I've never wiped snow from a dish before, either.

Remember to peak the satellite dish! If the satellite dish is out of alignment, it will be very prone to rain fade (as lazy me experiences on one of the 7 satellite dishes regularly).
posted by shepd at 4:33 PM on May 23, 2005