# Rain Fade DirectTV vs Dish



## richart53 (Apr 12, 2010)

I have been away from satellite TV for many years but had Dish many years ago (prior to local stations being available). Here in the Atlanta, GA area rain fade was a problem at that time. I know there are many more satellites up there now and different elevation angles plus newer equipment. Is rain fade still an issue? Does one provider have an advantage over the other? Or are different satellites affected differently? I am thinking of making the switch from Comcast to one of the satellite providers.


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## Ira Lacher (Apr 24, 2002)

Had much snow in Iowa this past winter and I didn't lose a minute of programming with DirecTV.


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

Unfortunately, as DBS satellite TV has lost its novelty and become "cable on a stick", there are just too few subscribers interested in reporting their outage histories to allow us to meaningfully evaluate testimonials regarding rain outages.

With DBS Ku band CONUS, "core" signals, DISH Network points its 119 degree beam at New Jersey, whereas DirecTV points its 101 degree beam at the middle of the country, so I think the Northwest region gets short changed by both targeting schemes, but the rain density in the Southeast always made that the region most likely to lose its signals from either source. Just about everywhere, the 101, 110 and 119 Ku band local spot beams were always reported to be the last signals lost during heavy rain everywhere, but I have not seen enough rain fade reports of Ka band spot beam signals to know how those might compare to Ka band CONUS, Ku CONUS or Ku spotbeam outages.


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## BenJF3 (Sep 12, 2008)

Bottom line is that no matter what provider you have, even with perfect dish alignment, you will experience signal fade with certain weather conditions.


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## Blaze (Jun 9, 2010)

richart53 said:


> I have been away from satellite TV for many years but had Dish many years ago (prior to local stations being available). Here in the Atlanta, GA area rain fade was a problem at that time. I know there are many more satellites up there now and different elevation angles plus newer equipment. Is rain fade still an issue? Does one provider have an advantage over the other? Or are different satellites affected differently? I am thinking of making the switch from Comcast to one of the satellite providers.


I have Directv since 1995-1996, The only issues i have on rain rade is when Houses fall out of the Sky..:lol:

Which only Last's around 5-10 minutes i don't have any HD dish only the 18"Round i believe this is the MPEG2.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

"Rain Fade" vs "No Rain Fade"








I would have bet that it was a different branch in the way, but cutting down this one doubled my signal strength to that satellite. Add a little water to those leaves and blow them around and I got "rain fade" ... not really caused by the rain but an existing problem that was more noticeable when it rained.

In previous years the only time I noticed rain fade were at times where I probably should have been in the southwest corner of the basement - not watching TV. This year that branch grew into the picture (and likely drooped down when wet, full of berries and with some storm damage to the tree).


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## jimmyv2000 (Feb 15, 2007)

Ira Lacher said:


> Had much snow in Iowa this past winter and I didn't lose a minute of programming with DirecTV.


Snow isn't an issue for me in NH
we get pleny of that,
Summer time *THUNDERSTORMS* are the issue between june and september


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## markfp (Mar 9, 2010)

I live in Upstate New York where some winters we get almost 200 inches of snow and in almost twelve years with DirecTV I've never had snow related signal problem. 

We might get two or three rain fade issues a year, but usually they're very brief. We actually had one just this afternoon during a really wild thunderstorm and the signal was out for no more than five minutes. I think that was the first time it's happened since sometime last fall.


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