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Are you a Dish Network customer with missing HD channels like TBS HD (139) and TLC HD (183) because every time you tune to them your tuner box pops up the Signal Aquisition dialog box that scans all the Transponders for that given Satellite?
Me too.
In my case, I have the Turbo HD package from Dish Network, which I’m really happy with — there is a lot of content and it’s a very reasonable price. I also have the VIP722 HD/DVR tuner and noticed that about a week after I got everything installed, every time I would go to an HD channel on Satellite 119 or 129 I would get that Signal Aquisition box testing every Transponder and it would always fail for me.
The company that did the install couldn’t get out to take a look immediately, so I did some digging online and found out that the problem was my dish had been moved (by the wind or just settling a bit) and was no longer pointing at the 119 or notoriously-weak 129 satellite. For anyone interested in details, this thread over on SatelliteGuys.us is an excellent plate to start.
NOTE: Apparently there is a replacement satellite for 129 that went up in December and should go online any day now (January ‘09) to completely replace that satellite with a high-capacity/high-strength signal.
For anyone that wants to check if that is what’s going on with their setup, bring up your receiver box menu and drill down into the System/Signal information. It’s different for each box, but relatively easy to find. Once you are there, switch between the Satellites 110, 119 and 129. Chances are your 110 satellite will have the strongest signal (around 75) with the others hovering around 30-60 strength — that’s what I had after the repair. Before the repair the 129 and 119 satellites were very weak, down in the red zones or “No signal”.
Hope this helps some folks out there that are running into what I did as well.
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January 21st, 2009 at 7:33 am
Yes! I have had this same problem (signal strength in the 20’s) on that satellite – despite having them out 2-3 times in 2 years to readjust it.
Starting yesterday I see the channels are now not breaking up anymore.
I can only suspect the new satellite is serving those channels now?
(Do you have any official type source for this info?)
I am in Redwood City, CA
thanks
Fletch
January 21st, 2009 at 8:39 am
Fletch,
Is your signal strength still dirt-low for the 119 and 129 sats or is it much stronger now? I think that would be a sure-fire confirmation that the new sat is working and serving up those channels.
As far as official confirmation, the best I could do were those threads in the story above — I doubt Dish would ever admit to anything like this.
April 23rd, 2009 at 9:12 am
I have same problem; signal on Sat 119 is 80 and signal of 129 is 29-30. Picture occasionally breaks-up and goes white, and then signal is lost followed by screen that says satellite 129, channel 208, transponder 17 is the problem. Is this foliage, or a bad satellite? Dish Network would not confirm; but offered a tech to adjust my dish. I live in North Georgia and the signal from 129 is very weak. Is it foliage or a bad satellite?
April 28th, 2009 at 8:29 am
Dish User, it could be either. Wind can knock these things out and if you have a sufficiently thick amount of foliage from a tree above your sat dish, it could definitely be interfering — the thing is, it would interfere with *all* satellites, not just the 129 one.
If your 129 is really that weak and your 119 is that strong, it sounds to be like you probably want that tech to come out and make sure the sat is adjusted right. They have this neat little reader they hookup that tells them signal strength, and then they loosen the dish mounting slides and move it around until the signal is at it’s peak, then tighten it up.
That’s what I had to do — you might try and atleast make sure it’s pointed in the most effective location as possible.