How does the satellite dish in my condo building work?

[Syringer]

I live in a condo building with a few hundred units and we have the option for DirecTV. My question is what sort of dish is there installed on the roof that allows the signal to be split to so many units?

 

[Anonemous]

I live in a condo building with a few hundred units and we have the option for DirecTV. My question is what sort of dish is there installed on the roof that allows the signal to be split to so many units?

A bunch of dishes or your video quality is crap. Pick one.

 

[JoeMcJoe]

A bunch of dishes or your video quality is crap. Pick one.

Wrong.

It is not split like that.

http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/content/mdu/owners/overview

 

[lupi]

guessing a commercial quality dish capable of serving more than the standard household dish.

 

[MichaelD]

Distribution Amplifiers come in many different shapes, flavors, costs and capabilities. A signal is a signal. The quality of the distributed signal has many different factors that come into play. "Quality distribution" assumes you have a quality signal to begin with.

That said: Satellite sucks. I'm speaking from experience.

Wind? Interrupted or no service.
Rain? Interrupted or no service.
Snow? Interrupted or no service.
Beautiful clear day? Interrupted or no service.

At the end of the day, no matter what "signal" you are talking about, nothing beats a good, old-fashioned, hard-wired connection.

 

[sdifox]

I live in a condo building with a few hundred units and we have the option for DirecTV. My question is what sort of dish is there installed on the roof that allows the signal to be split to so many units?

boosting digital signal is not much of a challenge.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

I've see apts with many small dishes on the roof.

 

[Murloc]

satellite sucks. In the ideal days to stay at home - thunderstorms and snow - it won't work.

 

[KK]

Distribution Amplifiers come in many different shapes, flavors, costs and capabilities. A signal is a signal. The quality of the distributed signal has many different factors that come into play. "Quality distribution" assumes you have a quality signal to begin with.

That said: Satellite sucks. I'm speaking from experience.

Wind? Interrupted or no service.
Rain? Interrupted or no service.
Snow? Interrupted or no service.
Beautiful clear day? Interrupted or no service.

At the end of the day, no matter what "signal" you are talking about, nothing beats a good, old-fashioned, hard-wired connection.

You must have had a pretty shitty install job.

 

[sdifox]

satellite sucks. In the ideal days to stay at home - thunderstorms and snow - it won't work.

mine worked fine.

 

[sandorski]

Aliens

 

[caddlad]

Aliens

Magnets

 

[Uppsala9496]

When I had Dish it worked just fine. Total downtime was minimal and only occurred during sever storms.
I did drop it for cable however because my dsl connection was beyond slow. All in all, no issues with Dish. Would recommend.

 

[GeekDrew]

I live in Ohio (that means we get snow and ice and thunderstorms and winds). The number of outages I've had with DirecTV I could count on my fingers -- and it was due to very severe thunderstorms. Snow, ace, and usual storms don't have any effect on it at all.

I'm much happier with my DirecTV service than most of my friends are with their Time-Warner and AT&T U-Verse services. The DirecTV billing department sucks horribly, but speaking from a technical perspective, DirecTV is awesome. You just have to make sure that your satellite dish is installed properly. If you get some crackpot installer that doesn't do their job properly, call DTV and complain - they'll send out another installer and get the situation corrected.

And yeah, as far as condos go, there are several ways DTV can be provided in a multi-tenant situation, without loss of quality. It's not just installing splitters on coax cables.

 

[Rage187]

Distribution Amplifiers come in many different shapes, flavors, costs and capabilities. A signal is a signal. The quality of the distributed signal has many different factors that come into play. "Quality distribution" assumes you have a quality signal to begin with.

That said: Satellite sucks. I'm speaking from experience.

Wind? Interrupted or no service.
Rain? Interrupted or no service.
Snow? Interrupted or no service.
Beautiful clear day? Interrupted or no service.

At the end of the day, no matter what "signal" you are talking about, nothing beats a good, old-fashioned, hard-wired connection.

That mus have been in the 80s. My directv is rock solid. Plus I can record 11 things at once; cable can't do that.

 

[Ichinisan]

That mus have been in the 80s. My directv is rock solid. Plus I can record 11 things at once; cable can't do that.

IP cable can do that and MUCH more.

 

[erikistired]

rainbows and unicorns.

and satellite does suck. any little bit of weather or even heavy cloud cover and it was out. and if my install sucked, guess what, they installed it.

 

[sdifox]

rainbows and unicorns.

and satellite does suck. any little bit of weather or even heavy cloud cover and it was out. and if my install sucked, guess what, they installed it.

Installer competency does vary greatly.

 

[erikistired]

Installer competency does vary greatly.

however, you would think over 2 years if it was an install problem they would have sent someone out to fix it.

 

[sdifox]

however, you would think over 2 years if it was an install problem they would have sent someone out to fix it.

not necessarily. Most tv providers are asshats. I don't know about your part of the planet, but here the installers are basically independent contractors and if the job doesn't look super easy, they'll tell you bullshit or just do a shitty job.

I only got mine installed after 3 installers. first told me only if I cut a tree branch, so I cut and schedule another install. 2nd guy tells me it has nothing to do with that branch and I am supposed to bury a conduit to the front of the house so they can put the dish on a tripod. I told them no.

Third guy comes in, spent 5 min to aim dish, 4 hours laying and securing lines (4 feed, big house and feed all over the place)

That dude took his job seriously.

 

[erikistired]

not necessarily. Most tv providers are asshats. I don't know about your part of the planet, but here the installers are basically independent contractors and if the job doesn't look super easy, they'll tell you bullshit or just do a shitty job.

I only got mine installed after 3 installers. first told me only if I cut a tree branch, so I cut and schedule another install. 2nd guy tells me it has nothing to do with that branch and I am supposed to bury a conduit to the front of the house so they can put the dish on a tripod. I told them no.

Third guy comes in, spent 5 min to aim dish, 4 hours laying and securing lines (4 feed, big house and feed all over the place)

That dude took his job seriously.

i mean, they offered me all sorts of things to not leave, but never sent a tech out. and yeah, the dish installers around here are all indies. at&t and comcast both sent out their own folks to do installs, and out of the 3 at&t did a world class job. the dish guy left a cable flapping against the side of my house, and comcast...well i don't want to rant for an hour.

anyway, i'm not saying it wasn't a bad install job, but you would think over 2 years rather than lose a customer (who went on to cost them about 20 more customers in the neighborhood) they would have sent someone out if it could have been a dish facing the wrong direction or whatever.

 

[sdifox]

i mean, they offered me all sorts of things to not leave, but never sent a tech out. and yeah, the dish installers around here are all indies. at&t and comcast both sent out their own folks to do installs, and out of the 3 at&t did a world class job. the dish guy left a cable flapping against the side of my house, and comcast...well i don't want to rant for an hour.

anyway, i'm not saying it wasn't a bad install job, but you would think over 2 years rather than lose a customer (who went on to cost them about 20 more customers in the neighborhood) they would have sent someone out if it could have been a dish facing the wrong direction or whatever.

like I said, most tv providers are asshats. I had similar experience with cable, one day I had enough and cancelled my cable tv, cell phone and internet with them. I told them they lost 170 a month from me because they ignored my repeated request to fix my cable tv issues.

 

[alkemyst]

Isn't dish network in apartments just being able to have a plate to put your mac and cheese on instead of a paper towel?

 

[CZroe]

That mus have been in the 80s. My directv is rock solid.

The small dish sat services like Primestar, DirecTV, Dish Network rolled out en mass in the early '90s. These issues are well known.

Plus I can record 11 things at once; cable can't do that.

Why can't it.
Get your facts straight.
The base technology is MORE capable.

 

[lupi]

I miss the good years of sat TV before the FCC fuked the services, being able to watch EST primetime channels on the left coast at 5 in the afternoon was nice.