A little off subject...but perhaps you can help with my Dish reception?

I have standard dish satelite running two TV's from the same dish....one is in the main house ...the other in our house next door. A 100 foot or so cable runs from the dish to the house next door. The reception in the main house is great using a Mitsubishi TV and a dishdvr receiver.....The other house has a sony and a dishdvr reciever as well but the TV reception is not great... the darks tend to be grainy with little boxes..... kind of shadowy and not strong darks....it seems to work fine when we run a dvd instead of watching TV. I did add a power booster to the line but that did not help. A dish installer told me it is not the length of the line but a connection somewhere.... any thoughts?

I agree a poor connection is most likely the cause. Recheck all
connections to the point of removing and replacing. On the
connection going to the outer house did you use over the counter
Gold connectors. If so they are made for 9 volts, and will burn
up giving a poor signal at your remote tv. You must use the silver
connectors with a blue hue on the inside which are made to carry
18 volts. :thumbsup:

Make sure your cable is RG6

Most likely dirty/corroded/broken connection... but would not be the first time I saw bad coax either. How is the line ran to the distant house? Is it strung through the air or buried? There is aerial and burial grade coax, aerial has to fight UV and stretching. Most other is suitable for burial unless actually noted as indoor only. Also, avoid really tight loops (drip loops) if any, at the entry points. They should be at least as big as a softball otherwise can creat hot spots in the coax...as the other poster said, DishNet is running up to 18vdc back down that line.

Who installed the connections? Are the stingers (center conductor) long enough? Maybe too long or too short. 1/8th inch past the barrel is sufficient for even the crappiest receptacles. Ive seen long stingers ruin the internal contacts, and short ones give intermittent reception (wiggle a little and was fixed, etc. etc.). If you dont have all weather connections, cover all the outdoor bits with a healty dose of silicone. Are they crimp on or snap on? Crimps could be too tight and pinching the shielding against the stinger. Could be too loose and not making sufficient contact with the shielding, are they holding onto the coax tightly? Shouldnt be able to twist the coax inside the connector... you can use some common house pliers to temporarily tighten them up if you suspect they are loose, just give the neck of the connector a bit of a squeeze but dont mash it!

I'd take the booster off the line for now as well... unless rated for 1GHz it could be hurting more than helping! Even if rated for dish duty, it could still be hurting due to noise being introduced. Swap receivers also, this can be your best troubleshooting tool. Confirm signal strength in the setup menu with the known good receiver(menu-6-1-1 on most receivers). Switch feeds at the LNB on the dish as well. Could be bad LNB... electrical gremlins... uggh. Good luck! Let us know what you find, and forgive me if I'm telling you stuff you already know...

I believe the dishpro LNBs perform better for longer cable runs than the legacy series did. Another option is RG-11 coax rather than RG6, it's twice as fat and has half the loss of RG6. Both options will cost you more however.

For digital cable, amps & splitters must be 2-way and rated to pass 1 GHz = 1000 MHz. For Satellite, they should be rated for 2 GHz = 2000 MHz I think...

For digital cable, amps & splitters must be 2-way and rated to pass 1 GHz = 1000 MHz. For Satellite, they should be rated for 2 GHz = 2000 MHz I think...

Uhh, yes, I believe you are correct... it's been a while.