Posted: 4/25/2012 10:26:05 AM EDT
| What are the downsides of Dish network? With a generator and Dish network I can still get information during a blackout (non SHTF) so I see why other preppers recommend the dish, but what are the down sides? Where I am moving the power goes out every other month. |
| I've had both Dish and DirecTV and they both seemed to work well but the customer service that I got from them was shit. I went to cable so I could save a little money having both TV and Internet and they have been good so far for me. The other down side to dish is that if you get alot of snow it will mess up the dish and also heavy winds can knock out the signal. |
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Don't you have to have a telephone connection for Dish to work? I can't imagine spending precious fuel on watching TV. My info will be coming from the radio, if at all. You only need the telephone line for ordering pay per view stuff on dish or direct. Okay. I don't have cable or dish. Just plain ol' TV. |
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We had directv when we were living in Colorado. The mostly-daily summer thunderstorms would knock it out from anywhere between 15 minutes and 2 hours. Very annoying. Ditto heavy snowstorms in winter. I've had both, I prefer cable. Internet service is better, too. |
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Having access to a sat feed is valuable when the local infrastucture is out for long duration.
An alternative is XM radio, some receivers takes only about 2 watts to power them and can be run with a minimal solar panel indefinately. I did a topic on a highly portable XM radio with a tiny handcranked genny that had potential for BO. This was abt 2006. The knunckle-draggers here had a cat. 
A BIG one... 
Another nice to have is sat internet in a protracted outage of terrestrial infrastructure. We have all 3 different sat posibilities available and the knowledge and instrumentaion to set them up most anywhere at short notice. |
| i have directv because of so many friends complaining about dish. i have been happy with them for the 6 years or so i have had them. my directv dish is mounted secure enough and in a position that it is protected from the high winds we have come nor easters. the only time we lose signal is during extremely heavy down pours and very heavy wet snow. other than that we have tv all the time. i can run my TV and sat box off an inverter and deep cell battery for several hours when the power is out or easily hook it up to the genny if we have it running. |
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I have Dish Network... They can be pricey, but if you keep them instead of switching around, they treat you right. Recently I moved and they offered to drop 10$/month off my 79.99 package, upgrade my DVR for a two tv model, threw in a wifi dongle so I don't need a tele line (there are no lines here), and did a pole mount instead of putting holes in my roof.
I do occasionally lose signal with heavy cloud/lightening. The Wild Blue Exede satellite internet works flawlessly 24/7 so far. Fast too, latency sucks, but you actually are faster, it just grabs entire pages all at once instead of slowly grabbing it. I am happy. In my case, I didn't have a choice... it's satellite or nothing. I'll take satellite. Had dish for the past 10 years. Wen't back to charter cable one time... for a month... and went right back to dish. Charters DVR sucks, the programming is ok, the internet is awesome, but that damn DVR pissed me off so much I just couldn't use it. I worked off hours and that is how I watched any tv. Dish rules. You don't NEED a tele line either. I also got free Blockbuster on demand too... They hooked me up for being a long time customer. |
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Every now and then the storm will be bad enough to knock out your reception, but that is short lived. Switch off the HD channels back to regular channels and you can usually keep watching in the rain.
I made it through 3 Florida hurricanes a few years back. Hook the generator up to the tv and dish reciever and you have the luxury of watching tv during the aftermath. It was a much appreciated break from the cleanup. (No, we didn't fire the generator up just for the tv, we had to run them every now and again for the deep freezers, so we may as well enjoy some tv while we're at it.) Actually, I can remember watching dish network in the middle of the last hurricane. We had great reception...until a tree fell on the dish 
As an added bonus, the dish service is portable. I know people that have them hooked to boats, RVs, hunting camps, etc. Good luck trying that with cable 
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I've had Dish for years with no problem at all. The only signal interuption is during very heavy rain (for just a couple of minutes) and every once in a while from sticky wet snow. If the snow sticks you just brush the dish face off with a broom (go pole mount, not roof!), and it's absolutely no big deal. With cable you can have lengthy outages in my area. With dish you don't lose signal from a power outage (you do have a generator or some other backup power don't you?) every time somebody hits a pole or a tree falls...
Dish vs. DirectTV? IMO: DirectTV if you are a sports fan and Dish if you are not. |
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been on dish network for almost 14 years. i doubt i have lost service for more than 10 hours total in all those years.
you don't "need" a phone line. i don't have one but my receiver connected via broadband. dish pushes programming updates to the recievers via that connection so it's a bit more than just for pay per view charges. The down side is they will charge you 5.00 per month extra if your receiver isn't connected via telco or net. |
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Been with DirecTV for 5 years and love it. I’ll lose the signal less than once every two months during very heavy rain storms. One great advantage of satellite over cable is that I bought an extra dish with tripod mount for ~$75 off the internet. When we go RV camping (would also work for my BOV) I throw that dish and my receiver in the camper (camper has a propane generator). No matter where I set up it only takes about 15 min. to have TV. Try that with cable. |
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Save your money, put up a high quality over the air antenna, Then invest in a free to air satellite system. Its free and you can get plenty of weather and news. I tell people free to air is like a shortwave for your TV.
I ditched direct TV last year, I have a google tv with netflix. I supplement that with OTA and FTA. More TV than I can shake a stick at. |
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Been with DirecTV for 5 years and love it. I’ll lose the signal less than once every two months during very heavy rain storms. One great advantage of satellite over cable is that I bought an extra dish with tripod mount for ~$75 off the internet. When we go RV camping (would also work for my BOV) I throw that dish and my receiver in the camper (camper has a propane generator). No matter where I set up it only takes about 15 min. to have TV. Try that with cable. Exactly the information I was looking for... |
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Just a mention, for low power and compact/portable reqmts, XM radio has many of the network news and talk show audio feeds that are otherwise avail on cable and sat.
The small XM that are cheap on ebay and sip power will drive a small speaker too. The sat radio services have an emergency channel too but I haven't listened to it for a couple yrs so don't know how valuable it is. There is a highly detailed sat delivered wx feed that can be received on a tiny receiver and displayed on many small devices. The advantage of sat radio and wx is that the antennas are also tiny. |
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The XM radio emergency channel is tied directly to the FEMA warning center and alternate warning center. So if there is any infrastructure left you will hear what the president wants you to hear. In fact, FEMA retrofitted XM radios into all of the EAS primary entry points as a tertiary way to activate EAS. There has been discussion at installing them at NWSFOs for the same reason.
As to the OP, DBS is going to be unaffected by a regional disaster, where as arround here cable can sense a thunderstorm in the next county and shuts down for the night to protect itself. Even in a national emergency, there would be a lot of bang for the buck in keeping the DBS uplinks working, with probally zero interest in cable TV. You will have to decide if it is more valuable to you. While ham radio sounds really cool, it's not a good media for broadcast (thought it could become one if a well respected/known ham (or ARRL) were doign the broadcast and the information was being provided by others. Real news at least try to get it right. My impression of short wave is there aren't a hell of a lot of respected american broadcasters left. And the internet, as in you local ISP isn't a very robust system. With radio, durign the day, you have a very limited range, often little air/news tallent, and a hiuge appitite for diesel and in some cases phone lines to stay in operation. At night you have the clear channel AM stations, most of whom are PEPs, and have an emergency console at their transmitter site. I think Expy's post is making me consider gettign an XM radio, I've never felt the need before. Generally I enjoy the quiet time and solitude of driving at this point in my life. I don't commute to work, and fly any significant distance. When I was driving 60k/yr all over the southeast, I might have liked one. |
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A properly installed sat system should not have any outages.
Background – I live at the base of Sierra escarpment. We have daily winds of 15+ mph – gusts to 30. Storm winds of 70+ gusts are normal. The few times a year it snows, it dumps. I have never had any outage due to snow, rain or wind. My signal is rock solid even with a good snow pack on the dish. Installation – My dish is mounted low to the ground on a 2” pole cemented into a 4” pole. The dish faces straight in to the storm winds unprotected and I hardly get any movement in 50+ winds. 
Remember the installation that DTV provides is designed to get the installer in and out in the shortest time. My installer said any signal over 45% was good-to-go. After the guy left, I changed the order of the components, changed out the 8 way splitter for a 2 way I bought on EBay and re-tuned the dish. My lowest bird is in the high 80’s. I have many 100% signals. If you started with 50% signal and get wind movement or snow - ya I would assume your picture will go out... Component Order – Dish Power Inserter – minimizes voltage drop and provides the most power to LNB Splitter with minimum ports - reduces db loss from splitting signal unnecessarily Receivers I don’t want to write a book if nobody is interested. Changing your setup and re-tuning the dish is easy. Ask questions and I’ll try to answer. |
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A properly installed sat system should not have any outages. This depends on where you live. Direct TV uses a combination of Ka and Ku Band, neither of which are considered reliable near the Gulf of Mexico. C band is required when you need to work through a heavier rainfall. Alaska has similar problems. Less percipation, but more problems from low elevation angles. At Ku I've seen uplink power increase 4 times (200 to 800 watts) and still loose the link. |
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This depends on where you live. Direct TV uses a combination of Ka and Ku Band, neither of which are considered reliable near the Gulf of Mexico. C band is required when you need to work through a heavier rainfall. Alaska has similar problems. Less percipation, but more problems from low elevation angles. At Ku I've seen uplink power increase 4 times (200 to 800 watts) and still loose the link. Not much moisture in the air here. Some thing like 320 sunny days a year (this can be a curse). In the middle of the summer it can drop down to 5-10% RH. You go outside and start sneezing - dries out your nose... |
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Save your money, put up a high quality over the air antenna, Then invest in a free to air satellite system. Its free and you can get plenty of weather and news. I tell people free to air is like a shortwave for your TV. I ditched direct TV last year, I have a google tv with netflix. I supplement that with OTA and FTA. More TV than I can shake a stick at. Interesting... I hadn't heard of those before now. Good contribution. |
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Save your money, put up a high quality over the air antenna, Then invest in a free to air satellite system. Its free and you can get plenty of weather and news. I tell people free to air is like a shortwave for your TV. I ditched direct TV last year, I have a google tv with netflix. I supplement that with OTA and FTA. More TV than I can shake a stick at. Interesting... I hadn't heard of those before now. Good contribution. There's not a whole lot on it, I think a CBS news channel, EWTN, LDS, and a jewish channel and a PBS station, nasa tv, Pentagon TV, and some super specialized stations. I scanned through it playing with a Ku Band dish . |
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Save your money, put up a high quality over the air antenna, Then invest in a free to air satellite system. Its free and you can get plenty of weather and news. I tell people free to air is like a shortwave for your TV. I ditched direct TV last year, I have a google tv with netflix. I supplement that with OTA and FTA. More TV than I can shake a stick at. Interesting... I hadn't heard of those before now. Good contribution. There's not a whole lot on it, I think a CBS news channel, EWTN, LDS, and a jewish channel and a PBS station, nasa tv, Pentagon TV, and some super specialized stations. I scanned through it playing with a Ku Band dish . Its like I tell people FTA (free to air) is like shortwave for your TV. You just can't plunk your ass down on a couch and start channel surfing. You kinda have to tune around and ferret out the information. There are tons on news feeds, international programming and wildfeeds) I would argue you can get just as good and if not better information off FTA. There is still a lot of value to shortwave. Are there a lot of christian based content...? Yes there is, but there is a lot of spectrum out there. If anyone is interested in FTA check out the satellite guys, they have trusted reselers and best contect FTA wise on the net. Link |