About MarkJFine

This is about as much as you can do. Only other thing is to replace the radio and/or modem if it's a hardware fault, but you will need a tech visit for that.   This will notify any of the admins when they come in on Monday morning: @Amanda @Liz @Brooke @Jay @Hardy ... View more

If you can get to it, check the cable's F connector at the satellite dish, as well as in back of the modem. It should be finger tight.   You might also want to visually inspect the cable for any splits, nicks, or any kind of inner cable exposure wherever it's possible. ... View more

@Saltlife wrote: 6.  Lastly, and I don't want to come off as rude but you obviosly don't know the situation.   I clearly don't know the situation and you have every right to be upset. But, to a casual reader that objectively read your situation, it sounds to me like a lot of this could have been avoided.   Hate to say it, but just like with auto mechanics when you don't know their reputation: You can never assume people employed at something technical are automatically competent at it, nor understand what your needs are.   The fact that this sounds like it was done by an independent contractor for which HughesNet is not liable actually makes the problem worse.   When he left, it was a tacit agreement by all involved that everything was copacetic. Of course they're not going to come back and change something unless they get paid to do it, no more than an auto mechanic is going to charge you more for another 'repair'.   Well, hindsight's 20/20. ... View more

I'm confused and frankly, just a little bit curious: 1. Did anyone not see where the guy was drilling the hole and ask him "why are you destroying my house?" 2. Did anyone not inspect his work before he left and declare it was acceptable? 3. Did anyone not keep him from leaving until he did an acceptable job? 4. You actually allowed an installer into your house with your kids unsupervised? 5. Did you do any prior research on what satellite internet is, how it works, and if it suits your needs? 6. Lastly, and I apologize for bluntly stating the obvious, but how can you possibly want a government organization and everyone else to intervene when you completely absolved your own responsibility in this? ... View more

@GeoPa wrote: That sounds great, but why does it still take an average of 10sec for a new page to open??  Maybe it was the cloudy day??   Each hit takes around 1/2 second because of the distance traversed before you actually hit the internet. Your hit request goes to the satellite, down to a groundstation, then out to the internet. The response then takes the revese route. Each widget and image that a website uses is another hit. 20 images or widgets no matter how small is all it takes to make it take 10 seconds. ... View more

You might want to play with your Video Savings settings, as well as the stream rate on the YouTube. Contiguous download speeds are not the same as streaming.   As for the content itself, find an album you like, or an artist you like or want to emulate. Then go to a music store and get some sheet music books of that album, or albums that include the artist. At the risk of sounding like an old man, that's how we did it back in the 70s... still effective today. For the more modern way of doing things, I'd greatly recommend a tab app like the one from Ultimate Guitar. Learned a bunch of songs that way as well. ....a left-hander that plays righty, like Joe Strummer. ... View more

@soulbarn wrote: What about a heating unit, like this? I'm always afraid those things could short and cause a fire (worst case) or warp the dish. ... View more

I wouldn't clean it, and mine gets a nasty black on it this time of year. Usually the ice and snow of winter cleans it off naturally.   Speaking of ice... I will lightly scrape it and clear any snow buildup, as that could be a problem. When you scrape it, you just need to make sure it's not so rough as to throw it out of alignment. If that happens then you need a tech call to come realign it.   I've always had my dishes pole mounted for this very reason. Takes less than 5' to clear the HN and DTV dishes from any snowy buildup. ... View more

Cable news channel. Any of them. The redundancy works every time. ... View more

Any moisture has an effect. The radio signal to/from the satellite is approximately 20GHz over a 22k mile path. Any kind of moisture in that path will attenuate the signal through diffraction. Heavy rain or snow will attenuate it the most (I can probably find the formula somewhere if I dig enough), but I'm not sure which is worse, rain or snow. High humidity and fog not as much, but it will attenuate it some.   What it means to us is that any kind of precip that's enough to drop the signal quality below 40 or 30 will essentially render the path useless. High Humidity might drop it only 10-20 points below what you normally see, and a mild rain might drop it between 20-40 quality points (signal quality actually being an inverse measurement of bit error rate).   Not all rainstorms will knock it out completely, but it mostly depends on where all the water is. For example, if the storm is coming up from the South, it might have more of an impact well before it even hits you than when it's coming down buckets over your house. Again, this is mainly because all of the moisture is concentrated between you and the satellite.   Ice on the dish will also affect it, but not mainly due to attenuation. There will be some attentuation at the point where the signal bounces off the dish to/from the feed horn. However, the main issue there is that it makes the surface irregular and diffuses the signal instead of focusing it on/from the transceiver.   Another thing you have to consider is foliage in and around the dish. If the rain or snow is enough to weigh any branches into the dish's field of view, they can either block or reflect the transmitted signal back into the transceiver. If it's reflected, it will create a real nasty standing wave pattern, and cause a lot of data errors, possibly even confuse the system. So, in short... there are a lot of factors. Sorry it's not a real simple answer to a seemingly simple question. ... View more

@NateMargo2008 Your connection is not cut off when your high speed allowance is used up, it is only throttled down. Technically, there no data limits. Plus, if you just signed up yesterday, the usage is reset hourly and the allowance is waived in the first 20 days to allow the system to be 'shaken out' and ensure everything is working properly. All of this should have been spelled out in the welcome email that they send to new customers.   All this said, if you are having a technical problem, please create your own thread here so the admins can properly address them and possibly do a sales call review... not a joke. ... View more