DSTV signal quality

[Daniel Weston]

Hi guys
Does anyone else have this problem? As I type this, my signal quality is running from 98% down to 60%. Its been doing this sporadically for the past month or two.
I know that bad weather often causes this but its often happening when I know for sure that Gauteng is not experiencing any sort of harsh or extreme weather conditions.

Could my decoder be the problem?
Cheers

[BigWoodenSpoon]

Check to make sure your dish is well secured, ours went out of calibration some time back after being exposed to the CPT south easter for many years. Got a tecchie in and he sorted it chop chop

[Daniel Weston]

Will do but the signal quality usually sits at 98% for 99% of the day. I wonder if its got anything to do with the decoder getting hot?

[dean]

It sounds like something is blocking the signal most commonly trees cause that problem

[Daniel Weston]

Nope. Clear line of sight to the sky...

[Cowboy]

Aliens are watching you, china...

[joel]

could be bats in your belfry, or rats in your roof.

when a cable gets nibbled on signal drops.

[windshear]

Check to see , if the signal strength drops, if this happens on both the horizontally polarised and the vertically polarised channels. What decoder do you have and why type of an installation do you have?

[mickyc]

Check the "eye" on your dish. I had a similar problem years ago and turned our to be the casing for the eye had perished completely and needed to be replaced.

Hope this helps...

[audiomuze]

by "eye" I presume you're referring to the LNB?

[mickyc]

Yup, sorry did not know the correct terminology....

[WaterHond]

Could also be the higher level of solar activity which they warned would affect TV reception - also affected is  GPS and other radio comms. Will upparently peak next year but is already having flare ups.

[Daniel Weston]

Picture started jumping again just now so I went out the back to see what's going on.
I was mistaken about the line of sight. My dish points directly towards my neighbours palm trees. The nearest one has a frond about 2m away from the dish. The wind is blowing a bit too. Could that be the problem?
Secondly, the grey bit at the end of the dish appears to be pointing down towards the ground. Is that right? Surely that should be pointing skywards? Its too dark to take a decent pic but I will take one in the am.

[Abu]

Secondly, the grey bit at the end of the dish appears to be pointing down towards the ground. Is that right? Surely that should be pointing skywards?

If you mean the thing at the end of the "dish arm", it's called the LNB



In my experience the LNB's protrusion where the cables plug in should be pointing at about 4-5 o clock... not down or up. Almost the same as the picture above

[Family_Dog]

Something to remember is that the white cable they use is totally rubbish. Over time, the white outer layer perishes and once rain water gets into the cable, it's replacement time. The LNB in the pic above is installed at around the 4PM position, which is correct. If you replace the white cable yourself, try get good quality RG6 cable that is UV protected, usually black RG6.


-F_D