Do cable companies in your neck of the woods still promote their offerings by trying to bring up myths about Satellite TV service such as rain fade?

This is just a curiosity, because it just occurred to me a minute ago (during some crazy rain) that the only TV service I've ever had affected by rain, is cable. Satellite and antenna I've never had a problem with, no matter the service provider.

I had rain fade when I had DirecTV. Usually, it had to be a sizable thunderstorm, and it usually occurred about ten minutes before the rain actually got to my house. I've had rain problems with cable, too, though.

I also have had problems with rain fade on Dish Network.

I just had some signal loss due to storms tonight, enough to chop off a few minutes from some shows I recorded. Compared to my Comcast cable, the amount of downtime is about the same, though.

I wonder if satellite rain fade propensity depends on your geographic location. I've never experienced it, having run various services for some 5 years or so, each time with multiple dishes installed.

In fact the only outage I've experienced was at my parent's when a little bit too much snow accumulated on the dish. It was solved in a couple of minutes by knocking it loose. But in my homes I've never even had that happen regardless of how bad the storms have been.

I'm obviously busier than ever with the new daughter, but apart from the crazy storm today bringing this into my mind, we've also been getting calls for the past two weeks from the cable company. Likely trying to upsell me some service, though I'm not sure because I've never been around to answer.

I planned on switching over my TV to a combination of satellite and ATSC. Originally planning on two sat receivers and dual ATSC tuners. Now I'm thinking I might be able to get away with only a single sat tuner, which will easily save me at least $500 (extra receiver and extra Hauppauge HD capture device).

No here they just do promotions with really cheap prices for new customers and if you are an existing customer too bad. I have thought about getting satellite again for a while so I can qualify for the cheap cable deals again. Last time I checked dish and directv both make you sign up for two years though blah.

How long would you have to not be a cable customer to be able to become a "new customer"? Could you live that long with Hulu and Netflix?

My parents' DirecTV service would/does go out with every sizable thunderstorm. It's one of the reasons I want to get my mom FiOS when she moves.

Just call up your cable company, and ask them to put you on the cheaper price plan, even though you aren't a new customer. The first person you speak to won't have the authority, even if you threaten to cancel. Keep asking for the supervisor of the person you're currently talking to, until you get someone that realizes they're going to lose a customer, and gives you the cheaper rate. But once you get to that last supervisor, though... you'd better be prepared to say "Okay, then, please cancel my service effective immediately -- I'm going to subscribe to satellite, rather than continue spending money with a company that's not interested in working with their customers."

"Rain Fade" is a misnomer anyway. More accurately, it should be "big gigantic honking thunderstorm passes right over your house fade".

That's the only time you'll lose satellite signal. And when it happens, it's not a fade, it's like someone threw an off switch. Digital picture goes blocky for a moment and then stops completely.

Honestly, though, in my historical experience, I've had my cable TV service drop out, lose signal, and lose channels more often than I've had DirecTV do any of those things.

The only time I've seen rain fade was when there was a "Big gigantic honking thunderstorm" that passed over DTv's uplink farm south of Denver.

I'd love to see what that looks like in a Google Earth image. Do you know exactly where it is?

edit: Never mind, my friend's Satellite-Sightseer web page already has it.

When I had Dish, I remember losing signal once. Went outside, removed the foot of snow from the dish, and all was well again. I'm guessing being a mile higher then many people helped reception a little bit.

So, google it! I just put directtv uplink, colorado into the Google Maps search bar, and it came back as the first result link.

Cheers

I tried that and didn't get it. Maybe I didn't use the right search terms. Satellite-sightseer got it, though.

You can confirm rain out in Colorado by looking at the Denver area weather radar maps.