A letter arrived from Dish saying I had to "upgrade" my service (for free!) with a new dish. In short, Dish was consolidating its West Coast (non-Spanish) international programming from 148 degrees (over the Pacific Ocean) to 118.7 degrees (over the continental U.S.).

With a triple LNB (the gizmo that sticks out in front of the dish), a single dish can scoop up feeds at 119, 118.7 and 110 degrees. The old system required two dishes to get domestic programming and TV Japan (though I opted out of the former and needed only one dish).

The satellite at 118.7 degrees is actually a build-out of older technology known as FSS (fixed service satellite). FSS operates at lower power than DBS satellites, making necessary the larger 30-inch "SuperDISH." Hence the "upgrade," rather than a simple reorientation.

The old wisdom applies here: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Last week the reception started going south (literally, it turns out) during the day, and by this week my TV Japan reception was dead (along with 119). Ack! And right in the middle of the Spring Sumo Tournament!

I called Dish, and they sent out a technician the next day to fix it. They also sent (separately) a quality control manager from the Salt Lake office (the tech was a local subcontractor). This is apparently common practice when a previous installation fails within the warranty period.

Strangely enough, the QC guy was the same guy who'd installed my 148 dish (that always worked perfectly). "Hey, I remember you!" we both said. The QC analyzed everything with his own meter and took screen shots of my receiver's diagnostic screens with a digital camera.

Nice to see quality control taken seriously by people who know what they're doing.

The dish had been installed without two brackets and had the wrong azimuth. The switch was left hanging off the side by the cables. Amazingly, it had worked fine until a combination of snow and wind and loose screws nudged the elevation slowly out of alignment.

Now, it had been the middle of January and there was a foot of snow on the roof and I'm sure the last tech just wanted to grab a signal and get home in time for dinner. The slacker in me can empathize. But it was still a botched job. The QC guy didn't mind saying so out loud.

So he stuck around and he and the local subcontractor (he wasn't the one who'd botched the job) realigned everything, added the brackets, ran new cables for the switch and mounted it under the eaves. Cracking toast, Gromit! Second time's the charm!

Of course, I must remind myself at moments like this to be astounded that you can bolt two hundred bucks worth of off-the-shelf satellite technology to a roof, aim it by hand (while looking at a hand-held meter) at three satellites in geosynchronous orbit, and it works!

Labels: technology, television