Newbie: Want to get D* satellite, where to start?

[bobby_t1]

Okay, I'm a total newbie to satellite and trying to get up to speed. I'm in seattle, WA area and want to get D* setup sometime this year.

Want either 2 or 3 room setup for my townhouse.
Want integrated DVR (Tivo) rather than using my ReplayTVs. I've heard channel surfing is really delayed (even with serial connection) and the integrated Tivo's have dual tuners which is cool.
Will be using it on a 10 year old 32" TV, but eventually want either a 40" CRT (4:3, probably sony 40" XBR) or a larger rear project TV (perhaps even the 50" Panasonic LCD)
Questions:
Where do I start with an FAQ or primer on receivers and dishes? I briefly browsed http://americansatellite.com/ for integrated TIVO units and it lists 29 units! Direct link to the page is http://americansatellite.com/products/list.asp?CAT=13306&inst=PRO.
What are the main differences between the packages? There seem to be 3 main manufacturers - Philips, RCA and Hughes.
I've heard that "3 LNB" is recommended since it will be ready for all the future D* HDTV stuff.
Is this true? Only consider 3 LNB dishes?
What the heck is an LNB?
I'm confused by the pricing. I have been told it's an extra $5 per room/receiver and an extra $5 for Tivo service. Is it a $5 charge per account for Tivo, or $5 per room/receiver?
What else should I consider?
Thanks for reading this..hopefully i can get up to speed quickly!

[Mark Holtz]

First off, I recommend that you get a triple LNB Dish. Equipment is cheapest when you are a brand new subscriber. This will allow you to be ready for any new HD offerrings.

With the DVR, you will have to run two lines from the Dish to the DVR in order to take advantage of both tuners. And, unless you subscribe to "Total Choice Premium", there is a $5 charge for DVR service that covers all DirecTV DVR receivers. But, the DVR works quite well.

If you have any additional receivers, there will be an additional $5 per receiver charge. The additional receivers are quite good.

Right now, DirecTV's current promotion is that for about $60 per month for the first four months, you get both NFL Sunday Ticket and Total Choice Premium. While you will have to pay $70 for the three rooms, the DVR fee is waived. After the promotion is over, you can downgrade to at least Total Choice for the remainder of the one year contract.

[bobby_t1]

I should mention that I am not into watching sports on TV (other than Golf, but I know most people don't consider Golf a sport :)). So thus, the NFL ticket promo going on isn't that appealing.. I wish they have a more movie oriented package, or just the the Total Choice or Total Choice Plus at discounted rates.

Also, I guess it's good it's only $5/month extra for TIVO/DVR service for the entire house and not per unit. For a multiroom package, that seems like a steal.

Any other input on my other questions in my original post?

[Karl Foster]

You may not want NFL Sunday Ticket, but, you will actually save mucho money by ordering it. The TC Premier package w/locals is normally $87.99 and you will be getting it for four months for only $59.75. If I were a new subscriber, I'd be all over that. Even if you don't watch one football game, you'll be getting all the movie packages, sports pack, and Total Choice Plus w/ locals and saving almost $28 per month. Oh, and you'll also get 14 NFL games every Sunday, if you choose to watch them. That is a smokin' deal. Then you can decide which movie package you want to keep during that four month period.

I chose not to get the oval dish when I first got D* (over two years ago). I don't have HD, nor the money for a HD set and receiver, so I never thought it was a big deal. YMMV.

I found a system that meets your requirements for one 18" dish, multi-switch, a Philips DSR-7000 receiver (Tivo) and two standard Philips receivers for $199.95 at www.orbitsat.com They have a system wizard there that you can put in your needs and it will find the systems that match it.

The companies that sell Directv systems are: Hughes, RCA, Philips, and Samsung. All of my equipment is RCA, and their standards receivers leave a lot to be desired. The UTV units, on the other hand, are quite nice. I would choose any of the brands besides RCA for your standard receivers, the Tivo doesn't matter, since they are all the same.

If you went with the NFL promo, your monthly cost would be $59.75 for NFLST, (4 months of Total Choice Premier free), 4.95 Tivo fee, and 9.98 in additional reciever charges. Not a bad deal for having practically every channel.

Good luck. I recommend www.americansatellite.com and www.orbitsat.com for online vendors.

[DCSholtis]

You may not want NFL Sunday Ticket, but, you will actually save mucho money by ordering it. The TC Premier package w/locals is normally $87.99 and you will be getting it for four months for only $59.75. If I were a new subscriber, I'd be all over that. Even if you don't watch one football game, you'll be getting all the movie packages, sports pack, and Total Choice Plus w/ locals and saving almost $28 per month. Oh, and you'll also get 14 NFL games every Sunday, if you choose to watch them. That is a smokin' deal. Then you can decide which movie package you want to keep during that four month period.

I chose not to get the oval dish when I first got D* (over two years ago). I don't have HD, nor the money for a HD set and receiver, so I never thought it was a big deal. YMMV.

I found a system that meets your requirements for one 18" dish, multi-switch, a Philips DSR-7000 receiver (Tivo) and two standard Philips receivers for $199.95 at www.orbitsat.com They have a system wizard there that you can put in your needs and it will find the systems that match it.

The companies that sell Directv systems are: Hughes, RCA, Philips, and Samsung. All of my equipment is RCA, and their standards receivers leave a lot to be desired. The UTV units, on the other hand, are quite nice. I would choose any of the brands besides RCA for your standard receivers, the Tivo doesn't matter, since they are all the same.

If you went with the NFL promo, your monthly cost would be $59.75 for NFLST, (4 months of Total Choice Premier free), 4.95 Tivo fee, and 9.98 in additional reciever charges. Not a bad deal for having practically every channel.

Good luck. I recommend www.americansatellite.com and www.orbitsat.com for online vendors.

I have to second what Karl says especially about the crap RCA standard receivers....Im waiting for the rollout of the HDTivo in the 1Q of 2004 to upgrade the dish/receivers.

[lee120]

go to http://www.soyouwanna.com/site/syws/satellite/satellite.html

[nuke]

First thing:

Go oustside and look at the southern sky. See if you have a nice clear shot to the south/southeast. If you can face true south and sweep left through about 20 degrees and about 1/3-1/2 up the sky, you have line of sight to the satellites.

From there, it's a matter of figuring out what rooms you want a receiver in. Then add up the number of rooms. That's how many receivers you need.

If you want a Tivo (highly recommended!!!) then plan on running two cables from the dish to the Tivo, as it has two tuners. The rest of the rooms only need one wire.

Make a list of how many receivers you want and start shopping. Ask for a phase-III dish (aka, 3 LNB elliptical dish) and your 'free professional installation'.

I wasn't real happy with what I was offered for installation for free. I opted to self install since I wanted the wiring fished through the walls and stuff for a nice clean installation. Hanging the dish was the easy part. Running the cabling neatly is what takes all the time and effort.

Your luck may be different or your install may be easier. My TV room doesn't have an external wall, so they wanted to tack cabling all over the place to reach it. No go for me.

The RCA receivers are cheap, but they work. I got the cheap RCA for the bedroom and a Tivo for the TV room at Circuit City. I walked out with the equipment (including the 3 lnb dish) for $216 (including tax) and a rebate for $100 and a Circuit City gift card for $50. So my cost was $66 altogether.

Signed up for the NFL ticket promo. It's a heck of a deal.

[bobby_t1]

Thanks for the great information guys..


If you want a Tivo (highly recommended!!!) then plan on running two cables from the dish to the Tivo, as it has two tuners. The rest of the rooms only need one wire.
If it's only $5/month for teh entire house, regardless of how many DirecTivos there are, wouldn't it be beneficial to have multiple Tivos?


I wasn't real happy with what I was offered for installation for free. I opted to self install since I wanted the wiring fished through the walls and stuff for a nice clean installation. Hanging the dish was the easy part. Running the cabling neatly is what takes all the time and effort.

Your luck may be different or your install may be easier. My TV room doesn't have an external wall, so they wanted to tack cabling all over the place to reach it. No go for me.
Installation is key here. I live in a townhouse, but i am an endunit. Main TV room has the external wall, so I figure installer can install the satellite outside and drill hole through the exterior wall without much trouble.

The other 2 rooms have externally facing walls (front and back of townhouse), but are upstairs and on opposite sides of the townhouse. I'm guessing the installer will run another wire from the dish to each room? Or is it 2 wires from dish to main TV room, and 1 wire from the main TV room to each of the other 2 bedrooms?

Thing I'd be concerned with the install, is that the installer properly drilling and sealing the holes they drill throught the walls, and fishing wires appropriately. Obviously the "free install" does give you this, but I'm sure you can pay someone to do this? anyone have experience with this?

Edit:
I found this on another site:

If you want to save some dough you can run multiple TVs in different rooms off the same receiver. I have one DirecTivo and three TVs connected to it. I am using RG6 with some high quality splitters to get the signal to the other TVs, and RCA remote control pyramids. Of course then you can't watch different programs on each TV, but it does have the added advantage (besides being cheap) of being able to watch PPV on all the TVs. I also have 1/3 of the chance of a box going bad (which seem to happen often enough) with one box instead of three.
This sounds great actually, b/c there is no need for one of the rooms to have it's own receiver. Having it share off the receiver from the Main TV is good... thoughts?

[nuke]

Each receiver needs it's own home-run to the dish. You can't have two receivers on the same wire by using a splitter or the like. The Tivo is actually two receivers in one box, so it needs 2 seperate direct runs to the dish.


I **think** the deal with Tivo is $4.99 for the first Tivo, and $4.99 per extra receiver, tivo or not.

Best thing is to call DirectTV ask them. Just say, "hey, I want to have (x) number of Tivo units and (x) number of plain receivers. How much?".

The Tivo fee is waived with Total Choice Premier, but you have to pay for the extra receivers on the account.

The NFL Sunday ticket promo is pretty cool. Four months at $59, + $4.99 for my second receiver is all I pay for the full boat package, since it includes 4 free months of Total Choice Premier, which means free Tivo service.

I know, more shell games than a carnival.

:crazy:

[Karl Foster]

There is a Tivo charge per account, so no matter how many you have it is $4.99 per month. There is a mirroring charge of $4.99 per receiver after the first one.

For example, I pay $9.95 Ultimatetv fee for three UTV's and $4.99 for each receiver as a mirroring charge and I have four total recievers, so my monthly bill looks something like this:

Total Choice Plus w/locals - $39.99
Ultimatetv - $9.95
Fox LA/NY - $2.00
2nd receiver - $4.99
3rd receiver - $4.99
4th receiver - $4.99
Total - $ 66.91 plus sales tax

[bobby_t1]

Thanks for clearing up the TIVO charges guys.. I see no reason not to have at least 2 DirecTIVO units now, and save a bit of cash by getting just a plain receiver for the 3rd room.

I'm not a handyman of any sorts and would prefer to hire an installer to come in and run the wires for me. How woudl I go about finding a "good" installer in my area? (Seattle, WA area -- specifically Redmond, WA). I'd need them to run wires to all 3 rooms to a central location and get it ready for the "free professional installation" to come and install the dish. No sense paying the first guy money to do waht the second guy is going to do for free anyways.


I've heard horror stories about the free installers, and I want to be sure I get a good one.. I do'nt mind spending a few bucks to have it done right with wall plates and everything...

How to find a good installer and how much should I expect to spend? Obviously it depends on how much works is invovled, but keep in mind this is a 1400 sq foot, 2 floor townhouse, so not that big.

[nuke]

Ask around, maybe you have a friend who's a home-theater nut who had a major install done. Or go find a "high-end" home-theater store and work with them.

I think you may find an installer who can do the whole thing, collect his $50 from DirectTV for your "free professional installation" and charge you to run cabling the way you want it done, all at the same time.