Hey, remember this?
Right after saying I’d ordered one, a commenter pointed out that it was designed for satellite TV and not for internet, and said it wouldn’t work for a modem. I didn’t understand why that should be so, but in the course of a long life I’ve found peace with the fact that there are many things I don’t understand and they usually involve unexpected limitations.
So I’m rather surprised to be able to announce that while it is true that it says right on the package this signal strength meter is designed for Dish and Direct TV, it seems to work fine for my dish as well – at least as far as hooking up and showing me signal strength. I’m not sure how accurate it is. It certainly doesn’t seem very sensitive. There’s a wider-than-expected range of dish position before the signal falls off in either direction. I can now certify that I’m right in the center of that range, but it hasn’t helped the connection speed very much. Maybe a little, but it’s still glacial.
Granted, my inet is not as bad as yours, but it is by no means fast. I was constantly fighting slow connection and tried everything. I recently switched from firefox to palemoon, and viola, I can stream with impunity. I highly suggest giving palemoon a try, it is basically a scaled down version of firefox, and you can import ALL your settings, bookmarks, and addons to it.
Is wildblue one of those satellite providers that cuts you back to dial up speed if you exceed a certain amount of bandwidth usage? That was a real pita when we were on a satellite provider. I’m sure glad the signal aiming thing works for you!
Is wildblue one of those satellite providers that cuts you back to dial up speed if you exceed a certain amount of bandwidth usage?
Yeah, a big 750 meg/month. I’ve learned to approach Youtube videos with caution.
In fact, since this happened abruptly and before my dish tried to fall off the wall and now I can’t find anything wrong with the dish, I’m not convinced this isn’t something Wildblue is doing to me.
I also use Palemoon. Seems a decent browser. Only problem with it is some slow website like “The Daily Galaxy” which I enjoy, will lock the computer up and you have to do the ctl/alt/delete thingy. That didn’t happen with Firefox.
I’m amazed that with 750 megs and a slow connection you can even contemplate video. My Verison Hotspot and Wilson booster with 10 gig allows almost none of that.
When Verison (or the tower operator) decides I’ve used enough space during a daily session they slow me down too. I disconnect the whole thing, including the battery and try again. Mostly that works.
It would be nice if major websites offered slow connection page options, like Gmail.
At one time, I pointed satellite dishes as part of my job. I had a Ku squealer that would give a tone sounding like a missile lock signal once I was on target. It well could be that Wild Blue is using the same satellite that Dish or Direct use.
I recently switched satellite internet and when the tech came out for the install he had an app on his phone. Hold the phone up to the sky and it showed where the satellite was. Very cool.
wild blue is most certainly NOT using the same satellite as either dish or directv… 100% different kind of technology, and satellite internet is a 2-way communication, NOT a one way down from the satellite to the dish. you can miss being correct on the dish adjustment by 1/4 turn of one of the adjustment bolts/screws and it might not work at all…..