DirecTV: Bad local channels

[dubstar]

I googled it first, but i kept getting info about other things.

My 3 of my local channels are bad, they wont play straight. It is as if I was watching a scratched dvd.

Any ideas? I'm going to lookup adjusting the the satelite angels when I get some time.

 

[Petros]

The three things that are likely to cause it are these (in descending order):
1. Pointing
2. Bad receiver (decoding issues)
3. Dish not grounded

DirecTV is good about grounding dishes, though, but it doesn't hurt to see if they have a little wire hooked up to your mast. Pointing without the proper equipment is risky business.

Standard DirecTV LNBFs point at three satellites, so even if you raise the signal on one, you're probably going to make one or both of the other two suffer. Do you know which satellite carries your locals? I'd start with that one first if you do any adjustments. The satellites are eight degrees apart, and if you're barely getting signal, you're less than three degrees off, so don't adjust too hard.

Have someone inside tell you if the signal is higher or lower by making gentle pushes to the left/right/up/down on the actual dish itself (careful not to bend it) using both hands on either side. Then, if you find that you need to make an adjustment, loosen the bolts a little with a 7/16ths inch wrench.

Be sure to write down or memorize where elevation and skew are set when you start, because there won't be a whole lot of deviation from those numbers.

 

[falconguard]

Get a terk powered antenna, or even an hd antenna and just receive those over the air. Being in Socal you are probably looking at 2,4,7,5,11,13 well most of the prime Vhf freqs. Then you can,hopefully if your tv has more than one input, just switch modes and get a true digital broadcast. It really isn't that difficult to add another connection in.

Sorry to hear that about DirectTV, I have cable.

My brother has DirectTV, and during football season, he likes watching the games on my TV.

 

[dubstar]

i like adjusting the sat more than buying another antenna. especially since i couldnt record the ota hd channels. my three selling points were recording LOST and The Office, and watching CSPAN.