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Non-Tech : Quote.com QCharts -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mike Gilbo who wrote (4363)	11/14/1999 8:55:00 PM
From: -	Respond to of 17977

Mike, Yeah, I'm not surprised to hear that, having struggled with both BMI feeds and DBC feeds for years. One thing you might not know about getting a good satellite signal -- there is one very major cause of problems that most people don't realize. And that is, if you have any tree limbs anywhere near the line of sight of that dish, when they move in the wind, etc. you will drop packets (there is some kind of shadow/multipath effect in the Microwave band). I've had some amazing improvements from trimming nearby trees, and eventually got some help from guys that can monitor the packet loss, to see it directly. The interfering branches don't have to be directly in the line of sight, they can be substantial off the center axis it's aimed at, and still cause a problem. Of course, since the Satellite you're receiving from is Geo-synchronous, it depends on the state you're in as to how strong your signal is (there's more of an angle when you're further off-center, and the signal becomes much more tricky to receive). Here in CA, BMI delivers reasonably good data, but I did see a major improvement in going to S&P Comstock. WRT cable, that is carried over a HF sideband, and the quality of the signal can vary widely depending (mostly) on the cabling infrastructure, and head-end it's delivered over. You have to be careful with how many times the signal is split -- I picked it off using a 2:1 splitter at the point of ingress, so that none of my TV splitters got in the way. Still had to add a specialized amplifier and go to expensive, low-loss cabling in order to get reliable DBC/BMI feeds over Cable. A lot of it, of course, depends upon the quality of your local CATV provider's infrastructure. The local cable company is feeding you B.S., they pick the signal up off of satellite, and it's possible that sunspots increase S/N, but they should have plenty of margin over that. It's probably something that could be diagnosed and fixed right on your premise -- some of the tech-oriented Satellite TV guys have enough equipment/knowledge to figure those sorts of things out. On another topic, if anyone gets too annoyed by anyone else on this thread (or any other, for that matter), you should know that there is now an "Ignore this person" function on Si... just go to that person's page and hit "Ignore this person"... they will be filtered out of your thread-traffic. Now there's a solution! Good trading, -Steve