I finally broke down and got cable. It's only analog and I found that the reception on the higher stations (50 and up) have progressively poorer signals. By the time I'm at 76, I can't see much. I put a small powered 10db signal booster in the attic and that helped a lot.

Could it be that my cable is inadequate? (It's RG-59)

Yes , it could also be bad connectors.

What the cable company does is sends an unbalanced signal that requires tilt compensation (they want you to use their box)
get an amp that has adjustable tilt high and low.

or the best fix LOSE THE CABLE COMPANY and pay less for dss

Hi kabster, don't know why you dislike the cable industry so much, but thats your business, not mine.
As for me, I use digital cable, complete with high speed internet (without having to use a phone line). I enjoy it a lot. I also work for a cable television provider, and can tell dtocco that the signal loss could be any number of things, most likely in the line from the cable plant (where it comes off the pole or out of the ground) to the house is most likely at fault, and a qualified technician with a signal analysis meter and some training should be able to correct the problem. It may take a few trips to get the signal to be at its best, but once it is, you shouldn't have any problems with the line for several years.

Being a custom installer (which I believe Kabster is too), I know exactly why kabster dislikes cable so much. We, usually have nothing but problems with it! It has extremely poor signal very frequently, and 99% of cable installers could care less about the quality of their work...They run the coax along baseboards and drill right out in the most noticeable places. We custom guys take pride in our work to make sure you don't see any wires, and if you do see them, they are all dressed neatly with all cable ties evenly spaced and facing the same way. Nothing is worse than a patch panel that has had hours of work put into it that has been messed with buy a cable guy or telephone company guy. I got called to a site once because the local phone company (Verizon) cut all the wires to a house with 4 lines and 24 extensions, and couldn't figure out what went where. CableguyOK could verywell be that "1%" that cares so this isn't any type of attack on him, I just know where Kabster comes from.

I know where all of you come from, I literally kicked my cable installer out of my house when he started drilling through my brand new siding, hoping to run his cable along the outside of my house. I called the cable company, and they were just a total pain in the ass to deal with. But satellite installers are no better. The only time you get someone with some intelligence is when they don't work for either a satellite company, or the cable company. When they're trained to do a good job, when the customer comes first. Otherwise you're stuck with joe schmoe with his personal 87' isuzu pickup with a magnetic sign on the door, (the un-dented one) that supposedly makes him an installer. I ran more than adequate cabling through my house when it was being built. And a professional would have known that by the pair of coax sticking out of my house at the service entrance. The only guaranteed way around it is if you install your DSS yourself, but I can't have DSS because of all the trees in my yard. So I went with Cable and I watched over the next installer they sent, like a hawk. Who was very professional, and obviously had been doing it for some time. What's a guy to do?

Digital cable - 35% or so of actual digital channels, the rest are analog channels?

DirecTV/Dish Network - 100% digital NO analog channels!

Oh, and digital satellite needs no tilt compensation. Just a good view of the southern sky.

I don't know if any of you have heard AT&T's comercials lately but they have been putting down cable big time. The latest one is a person talking about their neighbor getting DSS and she says "Our neighbor just got DSS and he was so excited until he found out his big oak tree wasa in the way so he had to cut the top of it off....He only gets upset now whein it rains and he loses signal" That is such a load of crap. I've only seen hurrican style storms or extremely bad snow storms make you lose signal when the dish is aimed properly. It just shows how much they suck when they have to make it sound worse than it is to people who don't know any better. Maybe DirecTV or Dish network should talk about how shitty AT&T's service is. Like the time I wanted Broadband hooked up and had to take not 1...not 2...but 3 full days off of work for it, and it never got connected. I finally told them to screw and went with verizon DSL.

Yes but have you also heard the stupid direct tv commercial where it's supposed to be their installers in a training meeting and instead of
asking them relative installation questions they ask "in a romantic movie what must one bag of groceries contain ?" "a baguette"
or "in a sci fi movie what's the first thing to fail" "hyper drive"
C'mon DTV, no wonder your installers are hackers the commercial is a moronic attempt to identify with customers ,
Sorry but my customers are more concerned with installation knowledge than movie trivia.

And now DTV is beginning to get the same rep as the cable companies , long holds unless your buying something , crappie sub standard x-catv installers , and so on and so on.

Get a grip Direct Tv , It's us custom installers that helped build your company . DON'T LOSE SITE OF US , WE HAVE THE CUSTOMERS EAR and your stupid irrelevant commercials are not helping.

I haven't seen that one yet. That does suck that they are starting that though. I do agree with you about the installers. Most people don't understand that there is a huge difference between a free installation, and a nice installation...What I was getting at though is that at least DirecTV hasn't gone and tried to make cable look worse than it is (at least in my eyes), they've just said stuff like "Why pay more for less?" which I believe is still true. Out here DTV is still cheaper than cable. Another thing that got my goat on that cable comercial was when they said "And with cable, there is no need to buy an expensive reciever!" You can get a pretty damn good Sat reciever with an optical output starting at $150. I think thats pretty cheap since the cable company charges you $400 if you break their motorola box. Plus you you can choose what you want, you aren't stuck with one model...

I agree McNasty, AT&T sucks ass, unfortunately though, a good view of the southern sky, on my lot, was out of the question, so I only had the option of cable. But on TWC's system, only the first 80 channels are analog, that's still 80 channels, yeah. But they're still no worse than the digital channels. And I get HD without paying for a HDTV DTV receiver. It was like night and day comparing TWC and AT&T. Plus the rest of my TV's don't need a receiver to watch the analog channels. Works good enough for me. I don't know what you pay a month, but it's pretty much my only option. And I have seen DTV signals drop out pretty badly with moderate rain. I don't know if the dish was aimed properly, but it was installed by a DTV installer. AT&T's motorola boxes suck too, no question about it, but TWC did have like 4 boxes for me to choose from, but only 1 HD box. I don't think I'd go with DTV anyways, I'm pretty happy with digital cable. If somebody else had a choice between DTV and AT&T, I'd recommend the DTV anyday.

I have heard that TWC is a better cable company than AT&T. I think AT&T just doesn't care anymore. And, if they include a high def box that is great too....I've never experienced any of my installs drop out from moderate rain, but I have seen it happen before. But, before I got into this as a job years back, I had a free install done at my house in Montana, and they guy stopped aiming the dish once he got a 65-70 for signal strength...that is HORRIBLE.
I won't stop tweaking until I get 90 or better, unless it won't give me more than 85 after LOTS of tweaking. I live in an apartment complex in MA now and the only thing that affects me now are a row of 50ft trees directly in my path, but only when they are full of leaves and it has to be really windy to cause any problems. My balcony is just in a bad spot...

Dish would still serve me best, I watch a lot of TV, and even though the TWC analog channels look fine, you can tell they're still analog. It's not a big deal really, but a dish would be nicer. AT&T didn't have a HD box, I didn't get HD until I switched. The only problem I had with switching was they had to put a trench through my backyard to burry the cable. I just didn't want to cut down trees or mount my dish somewhere stupid. AT&T really doesn't care...it's sad. TWC has some bad installers too, but they care a lot more about the customer. They're trying to keep them, not piss them off. I have only 1 personal friend with a dish, he got it because he lives out in a new development that didn't have cable when he moved in and wouldn't get it for another year. He has to get his locals through the dish because roof-top antennas aren't allowed in that city, and there's no attic access. But I've been there watching TV in his HT before and even in just moderate rain, his signal would drop out and get glitches. I have no idea how the dish is aimed, it might not be perfect, but his backyard is a desert, no trees whatsoever, and across the street behind his house is a corn field, so an obstruction isn't the cause. So that's like the only bad dish problem I've seen.

Roof top antennas are allowed anywhere , contact the fcc and they will tell you your management , homeowners association or landlord CAN NOT keep you from receiving off air (with antenna) or dish programming.
They can however make you hide it and use non penatrating mounts.

ItsColdInMN sounds like your buddie needs to peak his dish on all transponders ,sometimes you have to sacrafice signal streanth on 1 to get better on the other,(just try to peak all above 79 that way rain fade shouldn't create problems. bare in mind there are 4 transponders with no signal on an 18 inch dish .
Something like Transp. 4 , 12 , 20 & 26 this may not hold true in all areas but in so cal that is the case.

It's not the landlord or management, it's the city. They don't allow them because of maximum height restrictions. It would have to go in the attic.

I'll mention it to him, maybe we'll see what we can do one of these days. It's just kind of annoying trying to watch the NBA playoffs only to have it drop out once in a while. I think he wants to upgrade to an HD receiver....doesn't that involve getting a different dish too? So maybe we could kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

HD requires one of those oval dishes.

My two cents about cable: around here it's very good quality, with about 60 analog channels and (if you want) 60 digital channel plus 8 HDTV channels. I just get analog.

For many years I used nothing but an antenna, hooked up to an RG59 system. When I finally broke down for cable (hey, 3 months free with cable internet) I had *horrible* picture quality. Turned out to be the RG59 -- replaced it with RG6 and everything cleared up (except for a hum bar caused by the cable modem, but that's another story).

If you have a lot of components, get a good quality amplifier. I recently replaced my Radio Shack thing with a Channel Plus model -- got rid of a ton of RF interferance. Final tweak for perfect quality was tracking down two "not properly hooked up" radios that were interjecting various problems (one caused a scrolling bar on 27, the other caused RF lines on 21).

Right now the cable signal feeds into over 10 devices and all have absolutely perfect picture quality right throught to channel 85. DSS's idea of local channels can be pretty poor quality in comparison.