Satellite TV

[bigDstars]

One cool thing about Dish is that they added a whole bunch of Serius music channels...

[onething]

Never had a dish, but it is my understanding that you can beat the weather fade with a plexiglass box around the dish. IIRC, it is water on the dish, not in the air, that causes the fade - the dish is supposed to focus the reflected signal at the antenna and the water scatters it.

Aybody have any real experience with this fix? We'll be doing something after the move, and I think I might like to try the satellite thingy

ccage - Can you save me some research time and share your results? What projector did you get?

[Treibenschnell]

Never had a dish, but it is my understanding that you can beat the weather fade with a plexiglass box around the dish. IIRC, it is water on the dish, not in the air, that causes the fade - the dish is supposed to focus the reflected signal at the antenna and the water scatters it.

I would think that this would only worsen the signal... by increasing the area in which water could rest in front of the dish, I would think that scatter would become even greater. I'll ask the Sat gurus down at the station. We have mainly C-Band sats...but we have the occasional Ka-Band (DirecTV) sat antenna.

[tailchaser]

<nerd hat on>

Rain fade is caused by absorption in the frequency ranges used by DirecTV/Dish.

Installing a larger dish will lessen the impact of rain fade, but cannot eliminate it, as with extremely high rainfall rates, nearly 100% of the signal is absorbed.

</nerd hat off>

[ccage]

Tailchaser is dead on. It's not the little bit of rain sitting on the dish -- it's the tons of it between the dish and the satellite.

I do understand that up north snow buildup on the dish is a problem, though, and keeps you off-line after it quits snowing. I've seen heated dishes before.

Regarding my projector -- I've got a great recommendation for that, but I've got to run. I'll post that this afternoon.

Chuck

[ccage]

Sorry 'bout that. Had LOTS of $%*$ errands today...

I have a Sony VPL-HS20, which is one of the first reasonably priced projectors (around $3k) to do really nice HD. I'm quite pleased with it. You definitely want ot avoid "data only" projectors which do a great job of computer stuff but look really pixelly on movies. Pick out a high-contrast DVD scene (preferably really dark) and take it with you when you shop. Quality will show in projectors that show more true black (vs "grey" or "green"). And make them show you some normal sat channels -- they'll have it on Discovery HD when you walk in, which looks awesome. Look at the crappy stuff instead.

Be sure to budget for a quality screen which can run around $1k too. The screen can make a significant difference in brightness and quality of image.

Chuck