We just got DirectTV installed in our new house, and they cannot set up the HD because our neighbors' tree is blocking the damn signal....I cannot have an HDTV and NOT have HD ever because of that crap..is there anything I can do to get the HD signal without aving to go to my neighbor's yard and cut down his only tree??? There's gotta be SOME sort of technology out there that will help make it work...our last resort is to go to comcast as they do not have FIOS in our area yet...we wanted to keep everything in one bill with verizon...but this may not be possible unless we find a way to get that HD signal coming in ok...

 

Build another floor or say hello comcast.

 

well shit...guess we have to duke it out for the next year with our contract and before we sign over to the darkside...dammit...

 

no RCN or any other service?

 

what is rcn? but no, comcast and directtv is all we can get out here...

 

Get an axe.

 

Is there any other place that you can place the dish?

 

Just so you know...

If you were to stand behind the dish and think it's receiving directly where it's pointed your incorrect. The beam it picks up is actually about 20 degrees higher than where the dish is directly pointing.

To explain further...

If you had your dish aimed parallel to the ground. It is actually receiving about 20 degrees above parallel to the ground. I had the same problem you had so I spent a lot of time analyzing how the dish received the signal. With a little creativity I bet you can get signal. Once you study how the signal gets reflected to the LNB you'll see how the angle works that I'm talking about. So if your calculated elevation for you area is 30 degrees, the satellite is actually more like 50 degrees up in the sky. Knowing this can really help you find a spot to stick the dish.

 

with trying a different location for the dish. It may not be the prettiest location or the shortest coax run, but you should be able to reposition the dish and get the signal you want.

 

nope...guy came out to reposition the dish and we get nada....the tree that is blocking our signal is in our neighbor's yard and he's not very friendly about the idea of cutting anything. I want my damn HD back....anyone know how to get out of a one year contract with verizon/direct tv? There is no FIOS out here and comcast may be our only choice for HD...

 

How can you have a contract with DTV when you can't get service? Are you saying that the HD signal is separate from the regular signal? They're both coming out of the southwestern sky

 

yeah, hd and regular cable are two totally separate signals apprently...we get regular recp fine...but no HD. although I may call them and have another guy come out to check...but you ar right, the signals DO come from the same direction so i do not get it...

 

You signed up to have the service, HD included. If you can get it, thats the reason.


Direct TV is now using more satellites for their service. They now use a 5 LNB dish and have I think 10 satellites. When I get bad weather, I can get part of my channels, because the arms of the dish are pointing in five different directions, though all are south, but not in the same place.

 

yeah, i'll have to call and see if they will cancel it...my wife won't do it because she hates complaining to people over the phone...she's such a pushover when it comes to being sold...and i can't do much from work while she's at home...hopefully they can get someone out to our house to fix the problem before i go through the trouble of cancelling...

 

Is the dish on the house? They might be able to move the dish somewhere in the yard away from the tree.

 

Yeah, the dish is on the middle of our roof right at the very top. It's the highest point on our property without putting it on a tree...ar they allowed to install it on a pole if I go out and get something for it to sit on?

 

You don't have to put the dish on the roof. You can put it in the backyard as long as you can point it to the satellite. I use a 4 by 4 and make myself a pole with a heavy base. It doesn't look that good having a dish in the backyard but it gets the signal. I am thinking to fix this problem by putting the dish on the garage and run a cable to the switch on the roof of my house...

 

^^ I see dishes all over people yards because of high trees. You need to get the installer to look around your property to see if a signal can be found. Once there just plop a 4x4 in the ground and post on it.

 

sounds good...I may have to try one of he corners of my yard that he never tried...hopefully a post ni the ground will solve all of our problems...

 

DO NOT pull a 4x4 in the ground. The termites will crew it up in no time! Make a cement base instead.

 

One of the reason I hate satellite and steer customer away from them. Second is they have horrible customer service, far worse then cable, which is bad in itself. You should be able to put in on a post as many have said. I have seen satellite guys that provide posts to do this before, not sure if only some have them, as they are all contractors usually and some may have, others would not I guess. I can't imagine why anyone would want to go with a service that goes out when the weather turns bad. To each their own.

 

The weather knocks out my signal for maybe 10 minutes a month. That's a price I'll pay to see any NFL or NCAA hoops game I want. Service is better than Comcast, hands down.

 

Like I said to each his own. The only sports teams I watch are all shown on local stations. So I don't require satellite for that purpose. The only reason I ever understood getting satellite was either for a sports package like you mentioned or for international stations. I don't need either and cablevision has a decent hd lineup. Plus my cable has not gone out for a single second in 3 years in this particular apartment, or any other for that matter. Do you watch just your local teams or you just like to watch games from any city?

 

Actually, I'm a transplanted Minnesotan, so it's invaluable to catch the Vikings. Cable as a premise is great otherwise with the unlimited space so there is no signal compression, but Comcast is brutal to deal with from equipment, to service calls, to billing errors, etc.

But yeah, to each his own. Some people even like plasma TV's over LCD's.

 

Don't get me started there. You couldn't pay me to take a lcd.

Minnesota still has a football team

 

lol...yeah...I'm not totally happy with a dish at this point due to this whole HD thing...I do have to say though, customer service is worlds better than cable...at least here...that's the only reason I haven't bitched any more...since they've been pretty nice about the whole thing and they actually tend to return my calls unlike comcast. But someone's coming out this week to see if there's anything we can do about it...so we'll see..

 

Use a piece of pressure treated lumber and termites won't be a worry.

 

if i used pressure treate lumber I do not need to make a cement base?

 

Well I hate satellite even more after today. I had to rough in a job for a home theater in one room, with a second tv in another room, with two satellite boxes going in the same location, under the tv in the home theater room. Both are to be HD DVR's. With the house in framing, Satellite would not run any lines. I was not supposed to be running these lines today, as it wasn't part of their original order, so we had to add it. For two boxes, it took over 600 feet of quad shielded RG6 coax cable, because you have to run two lines for each box, for the dual tuner functions. I had a box of 500 feet cable on my truck. I had a third box I had to run lines for too, but they were only about 75 foot runs each. I had to wait for someone to bring out some more wire since I didn't have the time to go get some myself. Satellite is so fucking frustrating to work with compared to cable. /rant

 

 

I would still pour cement around it. It will hold it in the ground with less movement than just tamping the soil back around it.

 

Your neighbor doesn't want you to cut down his tree, which is totally understandable. I couldn't even ask a neighbor to do that. So just install your dish on his roof, problem solved

 

lol..if it only it weer that easy...well the dish guy is coming again tomorrow to see what he can do, and if he gets nothing, i'll try the post and cement foundation...man...i hope we get it before smallville starts!

 

In the 4 years I've had DTV, this has never happened. And we had some pretty damn hard rain for like a week a few years ago. I've never needed a service call for anything either. Its been very reliable.

 

Oh, and it sucks for you Pooh as DTV just came out with like 30 new HD channels today And more to come...

 

Do you have a list or a few examples?

 

Ok, I see 21 of them.....Big Ten Network, NFL, TBS, Golf Channel, Weather Channel

Now, do you need to buy a special package or are they going to be ready for me when I get home?

 

yeah, the swarm of hd channels is why i opted to go with dtv in the first place...so if i am not able to get an hd signal...then I'm gonna be PISSED!!!

 

It's called rain fade. I've had my DTV go out at least 15 times this year, all because of bad storms, once the storms pass service comes back. It's annoying as hell, but soon I won't have to worry about it, Fios is just about here.

 

You need to have an mpeg4 compatible receiver and b-band converters. I got my HR20 DVR about a month ago, so I should have them when I get home...

Oh yea, and you need a 5LNB dish.