AZDan
01-18-08, 06:17 PM
My D* system was installed today. My timeslot was 8:00am to Noon. the installer showed up at around 10:20am. I walked the house with him, showing him where each receiver was going to go as well as where my OnQ box was.
I was a little disappointed in where the dish ended up, location wise. I did not want the dish on the roof so there were really few alternatives. In any case the dish is solidly mounted to a brick wall that hides my pool pump. It has good LOS with the exception of a desert tree which is usually bare so I'm not worried about it.
Because the dish is not mounted to the house directly the installer trenched for the RG6, grounded it to electrical near my AC units and tacked it up the wall and into the attic. Once it the attic he had to run it about 8 feet and then down into my OnQ box.
It actually took a long time to get to this point because fishing the wires into the OnQ box was very difficult (There was already 12 coax and 12 Cat5 coming into it).
It was about 2:00 when he finally started working on the multiswitch and receivers. He installed a WB616 multiswitch in my OnQ box. I helped him unpack the receivers (I could tell he was starting to feel time presure. I was his first of 3 installs he said). I ordered 3x HR21s and 3x R15s. We got them all wired up and he toned out all of the coax to them. Everything came up with just one glitch. One of the R15s kept saying the activation card was invalid. He spentsome time working on this and in the end, removed the card, cleaned it a bit, and inserted it back in after a power cycle of the receiver and it came up fine.
I was initially worried about the receiver going to my projector. It's on a 40ft DVI run and because the HR21 is HDMI only I was concerned about dropping an adapter on it. But it worked out great with no visible distortion.
He offered to show me how to use the receivers but I didn't feel it was that different from Dig Cable, ReplayTV, TiVo, or any of the HTPC software I use so I declined. PLus he was in a rush so I didn't want to keep him.
He didn't leave until 3:00PM so the install was a little over 4.5 hours. The installer was polite, professional and seemed to know what he was doing. Everything seems to be working perfectly and I am completely satisfied with the experience.
Now I'm looking forward to watching the playoffs this weekend without the pixelization I had with Cox (completely unwatchable).
I was a little disappointed in where the dish ended up, location wise. I did not want the dish on the roof so there were really few alternatives. In any case the dish is solidly mounted to a brick wall that hides my pool pump. It has good LOS with the exception of a desert tree which is usually bare so I'm not worried about it.
Because the dish is not mounted to the house directly the installer trenched for the RG6, grounded it to electrical near my AC units and tacked it up the wall and into the attic. Once it the attic he had to run it about 8 feet and then down into my OnQ box.
It actually took a long time to get to this point because fishing the wires into the OnQ box was very difficult (There was already 12 coax and 12 Cat5 coming into it).
It was about 2:00 when he finally started working on the multiswitch and receivers. He installed a WB616 multiswitch in my OnQ box. I helped him unpack the receivers (I could tell he was starting to feel time presure. I was his first of 3 installs he said). I ordered 3x HR21s and 3x R15s. We got them all wired up and he toned out all of the coax to them. Everything came up with just one glitch. One of the R15s kept saying the activation card was invalid. He spentsome time working on this and in the end, removed the card, cleaned it a bit, and inserted it back in after a power cycle of the receiver and it came up fine.
I was initially worried about the receiver going to my projector. It's on a 40ft DVI run and because the HR21 is HDMI only I was concerned about dropping an adapter on it. But it worked out great with no visible distortion.
He offered to show me how to use the receivers but I didn't feel it was that different from Dig Cable, ReplayTV, TiVo, or any of the HTPC software I use so I declined. PLus he was in a rush so I didn't want to keep him.
He didn't leave until 3:00PM so the install was a little over 4.5 hours. The installer was polite, professional and seemed to know what he was doing. Everything seems to be working perfectly and I am completely satisfied with the experience.
Now I'm looking forward to watching the playoffs this weekend without the pixelization I had with Cox (completely unwatchable).