lux wrote:I have never subscribed to any of these dish TV services so I have no personal experience with them.
There are some things about them that I am skeptical about …
In looking at some web sites of these companies they seem to be saying that the dish must have a clear "line of sight" view in a certain direction and the presence of obstructions such as buildings, trees, etc will interfere with the signal and make installation problematic or impossible.
I would think this would be a major problem in large cities where there are lots of tall buildings.
Has anyone here had any experience with this situation? That is, they had a dish installed and then a building was erected nearby that blocked the dish and so their TV service stopped working?
And, what about communities that are located in valleys or near mountains that block the required “line of sight” view? Are there really no dishes installed in these areas?
Also, some of these dish web sites say that the dish only has to be pointed “toward the Southern sky” (Northern, I suppose, for down-unders). But “the Southern sky” is an awfully big area. It's half the entire sky, in fact. If the alleged location of the geostationary satellite is, say, behind an obstruction then how does the dish receive the signal even when pointed “at the Southern sky” in that case?
Lux,
I have had this problem once with a tree growing a bit too tall and its branches and leaves extending a bit into my dish's line of sight to its signal source. Also, from time to time it rains very hard (very rare in my neck of the woods) which causes interference. In my case from each of these experiences, this shows up as frozen and erratic images displayed on the set, or sometimes if it is very bad, the screen will go blank and it will tell you that it is trying to relocate the satellite. Sometimes but rarely and even in perfect conditions, certain HD channels will encounter issues but the non HD channel equivalent will be received just fine.