Well, That’s Something I Should Have Done Long Ago
The satellite installer guys are here now, and they got a really strong signal–I can get satellite after all. Four years after using the crappy local cable… I just had been told it was not possible before, so I didn’t try. Well, better late than never. Now to join SkyPerfecTV, quit the local cable, get the tuner box integrated into my maze of A/V wiring, and then maybe get that Toshiba DVR/DVD recorder…
Update: Unless…. A storm hit tonight–and the SkyPerfecTV reception fell to zero. Several times. I asked the installers specifically about this sort of thing, how much reception will be lost if there’s a storm, and they said, “just a bit.” Well, I don’t call 100% “a bit.” On the other hand, the weather service is saying that the rain hitting Tokyo now is unusually strong–and the regular cable did fizz out a few times itself. But it’s not encouraging. Anyone else out there have satellite TV, and your reception goes bad in bad weather?
Man, did you see the Shibuya on the news tonight? Like a river, you could paddle to the station.
And that’s the exact reason I canceled sky perfect a few years ago now. Every time the wind blew hard enough or a storm hit the signal would drop, so we said to hell with it and got cable. I only watched 3-4 channels anyway and they were all offered on cable for less so it was a no brainer.
Ah. Well, considering that the cable dropped out at about the same time as the SkyP (it does that often in big storms), and that my local cable is crapola anyway, I figure I’ll try it out–but I’ll likely hold off on buying the Toshiba DVR/DVD-R until I get a better sense of what the SkyP performs like here. As my local cable goes, it might be a wash. And I would like about 4-5 channels that SkyP would get me that local cable won’t–almost doubling the number of stations I usually watch.
As for cost, SkyP is actually cheaper–3140 vs 3675 for local cable. And if it does work, then the Toshiba DVR would be a huge plus to the whole system.
Here goes nothing…
Satellite broadcasts are vulnerable to very strong rainstorms like the one last evening. Wait till you get snow on your dish; that tends to stop it as well.
What happens is the rain hits the big dishes used to relay programs from satellites to cable broadcasters, and the ones used by satellite operators to send programs to their satellite transponders. We’ve had satellite service for close to 20 years (even before it became legal for regular home users), and this happens only a couple times a year. You just happened to get your service at a bad time.