The time has come

[Bird]

Comcast is running a TV commercial with a guy claiming he has to re-adjust his dish about once a week so he has more reliable service with cable. I installed my DirecTV dish myself, then never touched it for the next 5 years until we sold the place.

 

[rockinmywaypa]

Harv a buddy of mine does rock carvings on a cnc for a living. Last job he was telling me about were pineapples that he was programming the machine to cut out. He said the trickiest part was putting the swirl in the leaves. He's also done a ton of stenciling with small eighth inch cutters. All done by programming the machine and then watching it work.

 

[MossRoad]

With that kind of work, the art is the programmer's ability, but it is still fabulous work. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

[DAP]

Moss, it still has to be designed. Not many programmers design stonework these days. /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

 

[MDNick]

Harv,

I have Dish Network and like it real well. Very little interruption in service, just like others have said. I just laugh at the cable commercials that talk about the interruptions in service. Just doesn't happen unless a major storm cloud goes over head.

If you go with a dish system, install it yourself. Don't use their free pro installation. See this link. I resurface this link now and again when questions come up about the systems. I really despise professional installers on my property.

Nick

 

[Alan L.]

My dish signal has very rarely been interrupted by heavy rains over the past 8 years. It also never needs adjusting. When I moved to the "barn" 3 years ago I set up my DirectTV dish temporary on a 2 x 4 stand weighted down with bags of cement. Watched perfect TV for over a year before I finally mounted it up on the building permanently. And DirectTV technical support is outstanding. Really the only thing I have called for was to activate new access cards (with new receivers/TIVO unit I purchased). I remember when I moved in and got the new receiver set up and everything I had to call DirectTV at 10:00 PM on December 24, 2000 to get it set up. No problem.

I wouldn't even consider cable unless I could get internet on it. Turns out I am 5 miles from any town, so cable is not available.

 

[DougM]

I live in a poor spot to get south west to the satilite so I
would have to run about 125 ft of cable under ground
how much signal loss would there be ??/

DougM

 

[fivestring]

Very little, if any.

 

[DavidJ]

I agree with Fivestring. Probably not enough to be concerned with but if there was you can always get a booster. I have a little over 200' to one tv and I can't tell the difference between that signal and the one that's only 50' away. They're both great pictures.

 

[Dozernut]

We live in the woods and had to place our satellite dish a distance (250') from the house to be able to get reception. We have no degradation of signal that I have been able to determine.
We are getting ready to switch to the small dish as the big dish is slowly being phased out. They keep dropping channels and the only way to get some of these back would be to convert to a digital receiver. We decided not to put any more money into an old system and are having Dish Network installed next Tuesday. We are taking a step up in programing. We went from 29 channels to over 150, this will definitely increase the channel surfing time /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif.

 

[DAP]

Dozer ... you are LITERALLY correct. /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

With 150 channels, you will watch about 15 of em on a regular basis prolly and spend the rest of the time surfing through the other 120 as well as the other 400 you DON"T get.

I wish these people would change their interface and only provide you with the channels you paid for!

/forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

 

[DavidJ]

The one thing I love about my RCA receiver is the ability to block out all the channels you don't want to scroll past when surfing. I have mine parsed down to about 30 channels.

 

[TWINKLE_TOES]

Doug, you have some options for loss in the cable. I wouldn't use RG-59 from the dish to the receiver. I would use either RG-6U or RG-11U. 3dB is a loss of 1/2 the power. Their is a fair amount of margin in the link from the Amp in the dish to the receiver.

CABLE TYPE

Loss in dB per 100 feet Length

100MHz 200MHZ 500MHZ 900MHZ 1450MHZ 1750MHz 2050MHz

RG59U 2.6dB 4.0dB 6.5dB 9.0 dB 11.9 dB 13.6dB 15.3dB

RG6U 2.1 dB 3.1 dB 5.0 dB 6.9 dB 9.1 dB 10.4 dB 11.7dB

RG11U 1.5dB 2.2dB 3.7dB 5.2 dB 6.9 dB 7.9 dB 8.9 dB