Question about Directv/Dish Network

[SweetPete]

Guys,

Are these satellite systems affected by the weather? I'm thinking about switching from my cable provider to get more HD channels, but will think twice if the satellite reception suffers from rain or snow...

[charveljunkie]

If its raining hard forget it. But RainX does help alot

[rjohnstone]

I have DirecTV, and during heavy thunderstorms it tends to get a bit choppy, but I don't every get more than a few seconds of choppiness at a time.
I've completely lost the signal maybe two or three times over the past two years I've had it. And the longest outage I've ever had due to weather was maybe 10 minutes. Perfectly acceptable to me.

Of course compared to my previous cable connection (Cox), it's fantastic.
My cable would go out at least once or twice a month for no reason at all.
Sometimes for the entire day!
All I got were excuses, so I told them to pound sand.

What is this "snow" you speak of? I'm not familiar with it. Gotta love the AZ desert.

[FusionFarmer]

My dish network signal cuts out completely in a heavy rainstorm,

[Firebird V]

spray it with pam in the winter time so snow will slide off it too. if it is covered by snow you are done. no signal. mine goes out way less than cable did.... lol.

[SweetPete]

>> ...RainX...PAM...

I thought you guys were kidding!

[Rich#6]

Mine goes out with heavy rain storms and in wet snows the snow will stick to it ( a few snowballs to the back of it takes can of that though). I never had a good picture with cable for years.

[TexasRocks]

Are you serious about the RainX? I get rain fade bad with Dish Network.

[mhalsey]

My DirecTV went out a few times during the summer's heavy thunderstorms. Outage ranged from a few seconds to 5 minutes at the most. I'm quite please with the picture quality as well.

[VinceV]

I've had DTV for 10 years now and have lost the signal maybe a handfull of times, for a max of a few minutes. My cable Internet on the other hand seems to go out at least a few hours every month.

[Bengal]

I've had DirecTV for quite a while now. Rainfade is a bitch but it really doesnn't happen that often to me...

I use to have the basic cable package as well in my house. Just for the times when rain/snow fade would kill the signal. It happened a few times, but never stayed out for longer than 5-10 minutes. So at the beginning of this year I decided I didn't want to pay the 15 bucks a month for something I hardly use. I cancelled the cable in January and have not lost my signal once since then...

It will happen, but it's few and far between and it doesn't last long at all. At least in my area...

[442w30]

I have directv. I meant to sign up for dish, but got distracted - I liked hair nation that came with sirius/dish.

Anyway, it goes out less than my cable did, but when we get the BAD storms - like tornado weather, we can lose it all together. That's when I break out the cable modem and check weather.com LOL My internet comes from TimeWarner cable.

I did like hitting the weather channel when it's coming down hard and dark outside, but with dish you may just not have jack when it's like that.

It's never been down 24 hrs like cable, more like 5-15 minutes at the worst. We don't worry about snow much here

[Bengal]

Another thing. Cable gets its programming from satellite dishes. So they are susceptible to this problem as well...

[SweetPete]

Thanks for the input guys. The outages sound rather minor, so I think I'll switch.

[ABSOLUT CHARVEL]

so in seattle dish would be a bust with all the rain?