While I can generally give DirecTV high marks, one of their biggest shortcomings has to be some of their on-site technicians.  Four and a half years ago the guy they sent to install the three LNB antenna in the new house had a multitude of problems and in the end I had to call them back to rerun the cables.  I had to call them back once more to re-point the antenna because the signal strength was good enough for clear weather but even a light rain would cause rain fade.  That should only happen in the heaviest of thunderstorms.

Last week I had the system upgraded, and this tech was better than the one I had back in 2003.  He got everything installed, but he hadn’t removed the old antenna mast, he left the old dish from where he stashed it on the roof, and he hadn’t removed the old cable.  He came back the following weekend and finished the job.

I got home last night and turned on the hockey game in high def.  What I got was nothing but a searching for signal message; I think it was error message 771.  Local hi def and the low def channels were there, but Food network, VS HD and so on were missing.  I went up stairs to see if that HD receiver had the same problem or if it was just the HD-DVR in the family room.  It was both.

I checked the on-screen help and the first thing it said to do was to push the red button on the back of the receiver to see if a hard reset cleared the problem.  Since the issue affect both receivers, I ignored that advice.  I took a look at the signal strength reported by the receiver and saw 50’s, 60’s, 70’s for several transponders.  This was not good.  I hadn’t looked at the signal strength after the install last week so I don’t know how much it had degraded.  But the end result was no hockey game.

The DirecTV tech on the phone said I should see signal strength of 85 or better and they’ve got someone coming out Friday to re-point the antenna.  But I gotta wonder why the first guy couldn’t do it right the first time.  I assume that the signal we had all week was marginal – we did see dropouts occasionally and I was going to monitor the situation, especially during rain.  Why didn’t he do a final signal check before leaving instead of high-tailing it out as soon as he got a picture on the tube?

Anyway, it should be fixed tomorrow and he ain’t leaving until I’m satisfied with the numbers.

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