HELP

Ok, sorry to be dramatic. If anyone can help me, I will be grateful. I have DirecTV on four TV's in my home (2 are DVR decks, 2 are not). I have had the service for about 2.5 years. Until October of 2005, the reception was absolutely great. Signal strength in the 90's, perfect picture, couldn't have been happier.

Last fall, what I would describe as a pixelated haze or shadow surrounds everything on the screen. The more movement and more items in the picture, the worse it is (that is, sports is awful, if you are watching the news, sometimes you don't notice it). The picture quality continues to degrade and is borderline unwatchable at this point.

I have had the good folks at DirecTV over at least 10 times and they, literally, have no clue what the problem is. They changed all the wiring, put in a new multi-switch, updated the dish, moved the dish higher on the house -- all to no avail.

Has anyone out there heard of this or have any suggestions about what might be causing the problem? Signal strength is still in the 90's, system seems to be working great, according to the technicians who come to my house -- except for the fact that the picture is atrocious, and they all acknowledge that fact before shrugging their shoulders and leaving.

Any thoughts?

Compression artifacts are increasing now in both DTV and Dish Network because of overcompression of the signal to make room for HD and other new channels. The picture has degraded over the years because the DBS companies keep squashing more data into the same bandwidth. Actually, this isn't limited to DBS... our local OTA PBS station looks terrible for the same reason.

Thanks, Travis. One tech suggested that this was the case. When I spoke to the folks at DTV HQ, the engineers told me this was not the culprit, that I was the only one reporting this problem, etc etc. Very frustrating.

"You are the only one having this problem" is DBS-and-cable-company-speak for "yep, you are right about the degradation in video/audio/content (pick one) but we won't admit it to anyone".