My DirecTv has been working fine today. It goes out about 75% of the time if it is raining. I have found it to be an unreliable service in general.
The service is extremely reliable; I can't remember any actual outages unrelated to weather in many years we've had DTV. We experience brief outages only during EXTREMELY heavy rain (like, hailstorm-coming-soon kinda rain). Given that everyone across the US is using the same satellite signal, it has to be something about your equipment which is unreliable.
So there are a few highly likely problems. Your signal strength should be in the high 90s on the appropriate DTV menu; if not, one or more of these issues is hurting you.
Lousy cable inside your house. DTV officially requires RG-6 quad shielded cable (RG6QS) from antenna to the box. Many low-end home builders "prewire" houses for antenna or cable, but use very cheap RG4 cable, which has high losses. This lowers the signal strength.
Old or damaged equipment. You may have an old or cheap signal splitter somewhere in the system - especially if you're running the signal through existing house wiring. Also, newer dishes have better LNB receivers than old dishes. Lightning strikes of course can make things fail - and metal antennas on the roof can attract lightning.
Poor dish pointing. This can drift over time, if your mount isn't very tight. Any competent installer can fix this problem in minutes; you can do it yourself with a little work. A little Google searching will give you instructions.
Blocked satellite signal. Obviously anything between your dish and the satellite won't help. Even light tree or bush cover can kill signal.
