Not So Direct TV

It started before I went to Springfield. All of a sudden I would loose the picture getting an error saying the satellite single has been lost. It was what you usually got when there was bad weather. I would press the reset button and after a few minutes I would get the picture back and everything would be fine. I didn’t pay too much attention to it. But it seemed to be happening more and more often.

I made sure Stuart knew about it when he took care of Sam.

When I got back it just continued to get worse. I also had the receiver not recognize the card. I called DirecTV and they talked me through what to do to get the card back working. I also tole them the problems I’d been having. They said it might have something to do with the card and to see what happened.

The signal continued to drop. I called into DirecTV again. The thing is when you call in it takes a very long time to actually get to a real person. The automated voice goes through a whole bunch of things you should do. Make sure your connections are not loose. Make sure there are no tree branches blocking the dish which would be very interesting considering I live a row house with no trees of any kind around. Finally get to a person. I tell them my problem. We got through a whole bunch of things. Disconnect the wires and screw them back in which I did. Then I’m asked if I can see the dish. I say no it’s on the roof and I don’t have any way of getting up there. I’m told the reset should take care of the problem but if it doesn’t to call back and they’d make arrangements to have someone come out and check things out.

The problem only got worse. I was lucky if I got 20 minutes of watching in before it the signal dropped. I called from work where I was told I needed to be home to run some sort of test on the receiver. I said it would have been nice if I’d been told that the last time I called in. When I got home I decided I was too tired to call (I’d been out to the Kalb report more about that later). The next morning I had a picture the entire time I had it on.

Finally on Tuesday I got the call in. Again it took more than five minutes to finally reach a person. So we performed this test. It tests the signal. It seemed to be fine. I was then told to make sure the connections were fine and was it possible to follow the cable to the dish to see if anything was wrong with the cable. I said the dish was on the roof and I didn’t have a ladder to get up there. The women said well we wouldn’t want you climbing on the roof. So I got an appointment for Sunday between 8-12.

After I got off the phone, I was struck by something. If I’d been able to follow the cable how would I have know if something was wrong with. Unless the cable wasn’t connected to the dish how would I be able to tell if the connect was correct. It didn’t make that much sense to me.

By this time I was getting about 5 minutes of viewing in before it would go out. So I was like oh no I don’t want to see if the Ravens drive down the field and win the game against the Patriots of gee I really didn’t want to see the last scene of Brothers and Sisters. I just kind of stopped watching TV.

Sunday came. Thankfully the guy didn’t arrive at 8 am. I got a call around 9 from him saying he would be there in an hour or hour and a half. Then about 10 minutes later I received an automated call asking if the new time would work for me. I said yes although it really wasn’t a new time.

The guy arrived when he said he would. He checked things out and tested the signal and looked at the box on the outside of the house. In the end he replaced the receiver and ran a new cable from the box to the receiver. The other cable had a connector on it and he thought that could cause a problem. Around 11:30 I had a working signal and except for a problem in the middle of the Redskins game (which was a problem Fox was having broadcasting the game) everything’s been fine.