Do you still have this dish?

Look carefully. This is the DIRECTV AT-9 “Sidecar” dish. It’s different from other dishes because it has a separate LNB head set off at an angle. It’s been out of production for years.

Chances are you don’t have this dish, because it wasn’t one of DIRECTV’s more popular designs. The thin wires between the two LNB heads were prone to breaking and as soon as DIRECTV’s Slimline dish became available, installers were told to replace this dish whenever they saw it.

The Sidecar dish came about because DIRECTV still had a lot of programming from its 110 and 119 satellite locations. Although it’s never been confirmed, rumor has it that this dish was originally going to be a 3-location dish like the Slimline-3 but was modified at the last minute when DIRECTV just wasn’t ready to go to only three locations.

If you have a dish like this one and it’s still working, this may be the perfect time to upgrade it. You could change over to SWM technology at the same time, or just change out the old dish for a new one that will be expected to work for years to come.

The bottom line here folks, DIRECTV doesn’t make too many “real duesies” but the AT-9 Sidecar dish was a bad design plain and simple and it’s time to put it behind us. There has never been a better time to upgrade your dish. The new Slimline Reverse Band 3 dish gives you the ability to support up to 13 receivers and is totally future-proof. It’s the dish you need for 4K service in the next year. Why not give us a call at 888-233-7563 to arrange for an upgrade?

About the Author

Stuart Sweet
Stuart Sweet is the editor-in-chief of The Solid Signal Blog and a "master plumber" at Signal Group, LLC. He is the author of over 10,000 articles and longform tutorials including many posted here. Reach him by clicking on "Contact the Editor" at the bottom of this page.