Who has Directv/satellite dish TV? Having problems?

Our satellite has been messed up for 5 days now. It started with what I call glitching where the tv is all messy squares/pixels. The first two days it did that then went to the set up menu. The next two days, I had nothing but the set up menu. Finally yesterday my screen was the menu, minus any channels and only two screens, the other was the filter menu. After talking to the folks directv a few times, they have told me it only affects sony and some hughes models. Apparently they are launching a new satellite to service some 23 million new customers and updating the Hughes software. I am wondering how many of you have Directv and Hughes/Sony and are being affected by this? The customer rep I spoke to told me it was just a handful of people.

We have the the RCA box & Directv service. Our service has been normal...thank goodness! The kids have gotten used to watching their shows and when we've had problems they have to get by with PBS. Sorry to hear you are having problems. Did you ask if they would credit you for those days? Heck, you didn't have service & most likely, they'll bill you normally.

Gemila

I have Hughes and have not noticed any problems other than 300 channels and nothing on. lol

It took me two days to get thru to them and Badseed you were told only a few people had this problem ? I have a Hughes reciever and I was having the same problem for three days. Today it seems fine. I also have the same set-up in my bedroom including a Hughes reciever but have not had a problem there ? Strange ?

I still have nothing!!! They did promise me a free month of Showtime though. :) Now I just have to find out WHEN I will actually get it. LOL

Hughes here....the only glitch we've had is that our Fox west network has dropped off....(we were 'grandfathered over from Primestar with both feeds of networks)

I don't dare call and complain...or they might stick me with the local channels.....AKKKK! don't care a flip about local news, I can get that on the radio.

LOL Melody.

Oh, I forgot to answer. Yes, we will get credit for the time without. They told my hubby yesterday there would be a resolution with in 24 hours. We still have nada. It was 24 hours around 7 hours ago.

I got so tired of all the problems I had with DirecTV that I finally cancelled it and went with cable..so all I have to say is good luck to all that still have DirecTV..

Kris

I called them again last night. After talking to 3 more tech specialists, they said they would be sending out new receivers. That will take another 2-5 business days. Sigh. The funniest thing is how they act like they are doing me a huge favor by sending me out a new receiver free of charge, along with the box and shipping to return my other. I explained to them how the one I had worked fine until they decided to update software. LOL I will get credit for the time without service plus a free month of Showtime. I guess the biggest irony here, is that I was just griping last week that I pay $50/month for satllite service, some 180 channels or something and yet there is never anything good on tv to watch. LOL

Badseed.........I have Directv and a hughs box and Sony TV......wish I could get cable, we live in the country, and Satalite is it...I also have Direcway for my Broadband...and like you pay a small fortune for this privlidge.....but they got you coming and going...what are ya gonna do.....

The only thing I notice was these white lines going across my tv set from time to time.....and I had no clue that they were upgrading Huges software....so does that apply nation wide....I live in Northern Michigan.....

Deann

They told me they had acquired like 23 million customers or something like that and I can't remember what country or area the guy said they were in but because of it, they launched another satellite. This supposedly caused Hughes to do some sort of software upgrade. Another person said there was just a glitch with some of the Hughes receivers and they were shutting off and restarting. They say only a handful of people are affected by all of this.

have directv too - no problem here - thank goodness. They keep raising our bills - DH calls and says he needs to change to a different carrier and they offer to lower the bills - go figure.... what a scam...

I have the Dish. Whenever I have a problem the first thing they tell me to do is to unplug the receiver from the wall. Wait for a minute and plug back in. I have been told sometimes the satellite will loose its connection and by doing this it will be able to reprogram. Now you ask has it worked in the past? It did the first time I had the problem. So now whenever we have a problem I do that and sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn't. I know I have wireless internet. Once in a while my computer starts to act funny. Then I unplug it and replug and it has helped it many a times.

They had me pull out and reinsert the card several times and also unplug and replug several times. Nada, nothing, zilch. LOL My receiver is doing nothing.

My reciever (Hughes) seems to be back to normal today. Hope I'm not speaking to soon ?

We have Direct TV. 2 dishes here hooked to 4 tv's. Only probelm we ever have is in a heavy snow or rainstorm. 1 dish is under an eve. It gets icicles hanging in front of it, things go blank. Remove ice and away we go.
I also have wireless interent. This comes off of a tower about 8 miles from our house. Works great! and very reasonable.
Only probelm on it was before I got the right anti-virus & blockers installed.
Don't ask what I have, because I really don't know. I do have Norton & something called pest patrol plus some other things.
Bernie

Badseed,

With all of that terrible weather all over you probably won't get anything for a while. Have you cleaned your dish? Does it have snow on it? Even a lot of water from rain will mess it up. We have to clean ours every once in a while and then it works perfect.

Another thing which is really weird is if your cell phone tower accumulates snow on it you won't get any service until it melts.

Jeanette

Hi Badseed,

Just a couple observations which would be of no help to anyone.

At the old house, we had 1 dish (Directv) facing south of course, and 2 receivers. Our summer storms build up heavily to the west and south and Ft Lauderdale airport is south of the house. The satellite went out everytime it rained hard and had a pixel glitch when a jet passed the sightline of the dish. The 2nd receiver in my office was always going out for no reason. Had to turn it off to reset it, about once every 2 weeks. I left all that equipment there when I moved and got new "free" equipment at the new house.

When I moved here I got 2 receivers (unknown brand name with no "cards") and 1 new dish. The only problem I had was due to the installers shortcomings. They mounted the bracket for the dish on a narrow fascia board using only the two top bolt holes. The bottom half of the bracket was hanging over the bottom edge of the fascia. When the wind blew, it waggled the dish. I wedged a putty knife up the bottom of the bracket to keep that from happening and I also tightened up the nuts that steady the dish on its axis. Had no problems at all since (excluding hurricane winds of course). Guess I'm just lucky.

Maybe when you get your new receiver it will be better and different from the last one and that may solve the problem. I hope so for you.

Molly
:^)))

Thanks a bunch for all the replies. I guess most of all I am shocked that not more people are having problems. We have had satellite since right after the small dishes came out. It cost us about $500 when we bought ours. Anymore they are cheap or free when sign up for service. Our receiver did go out about 1 1/2 or 2 years ago and they gave us a new receiver so they could keep making money off our monthly service.

Our weather is yucky but nowhere as bad as they said it would be. It is COLD but we only got about 2 inches of the 1-5 they threatened us with. The roads are clean. So is our dish. :) I am married to a tech nerd so he checked all the right things before we called. The same things have been checked many times since. Whatever it was that Hughes did to the software update or new satellite or whatever really rendered our system useless.

Well, I am sure your "tech nerd" did this, but each time we have a problem they tell us to unplug it and wait 15 seconds. Then plug it back in. It works every time except for the time I forgot to pay our bill. LOL

Jeanette