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Sitedrifter
12-22-05, 06:03 PM
Installer came and said I did not need a ground.. I said, leave and he said Ok after I signed the rejection. I went in the house to call Dish and my door bell rings, it is the installer. He has his boss on the phone yelling at him, telling him to ground the system to the cold water pipe and what the hell is wrong with him. Well, after he holds the phone away from his ear and then the call ends, we are back in business. He mounts the dish 500 and installs a single LNB to dial it in. I had him drill an entrance hole into my crawlspace behind the gutter. He did Ok with that and runs the cable (dual RG6) into the crawl. I made him put loops in the cable so water will not follow it into the crawlspace. We go into the crawlspace and he wants to use the RG59 cable already down there and said it was RG6. I said it is RG59 and he countered saying it was RG6. I said, you find a swept spec on that cable and then we are in business, ;) he said he will install new cable :D

He runs cable to my daughters room who has her own receiver and then runs a single coax to my bedroom and a single coax to my family room. Those 2 rooms are sharing the 942 DVR. I asked him why one cable to the family room and not 2 (one to come back to my bedroom since the DVR is int he family room) and he says he is installing a diplexor that allows back stacking???? Well I was skeptical and said you have 1 chance to make it work or you are running a second cable. he smiled and said it will work (we had a good repore by now...) Any coments on this diplexor thing? Seems it allows satellite and VHF to run over the same cable or am I wrong?

After the cables were all run and secured we go and check the TVs. My daughters works fine and so does the family room but my bedroom is showing the same thing as the family room,. I tell him to put it into dual mode and he said that was not the problem. He calls tech support at Dish and they fumble with him for about 10 minutes (quite comical) when I said, listem to me, put it in dual mode. Well the woman on the phone heard me and said.. You don't have it in dual mode (like the installer was a dip :hurah: ), put it in dual mode. BAM!!!! it works. The installer checks my signal but only one transponder on each satellite (110 and 119) and the signal is 102 and 110 respecitively. I made him go through all the transponders on each satellite and the 119 SAT had mid 94 to 110 and the 110 SAT had 88 to 102 signal strength. He said WOW, you have a great signal overall. I hope so (anyone care to comment) even though he did setup the dish REAL FAST and I am sure it could be tweaked better.

Well, he leaves (gave him a tip for allowing me to bust his $12/hr balls) and so I go to test the system.

All I can say is WOW. The pitcure SMOKES cable and the HD is freaking phenominal (cable HD could not touch this Satellite HD)

I am in love with satellite right now and I hope this is the start iof a long relationship!


I am one happy customer right now!

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greatwhitenorth
12-22-05, 06:57 PM
As a DNS installer, gald the "horror show" turned out alright in the end, glad there's another happy customer, and welcome to the world of DBS.

Regarding the diplexer, yes, that's a common tactic we use to save from running additional cable, and drilling more holes in your house. It's used to combine and split out signals of different frequency ranges. Absolutley a standard procedure.

As far as your signal strength goes, installers are told to check just the default transponders. Yes, those are good signal strengths, dual tuner recievers usually read a bit lower than the signal strength on a single tuner reciever (no, I don't know why). I'm not sure if any tweaking would benefit.

I found it refreshing that when you decided you lost confidence in the installer, you got personally involved in the installation. That saves a lot of "surprises" down the road. Yeah, training up new techs is tough, and sounds like you got a newbie. Glad you could help him through it. Enjoy the system!

Sitedrifter
12-22-05, 07:10 PM
The way I look at it, if the tech gets a wiff you are competent is what you are saying and willing to help, they will usually go with the flow as OMAR did today. Yep, got on a first name basis real quick with him. I do not think he was a newbie, he said he was doing it for the last 1.9 years and the way he worked his tool belt he has been doing it for a bit, but.. just like most unsupervised workers, they tend to take short cuts, no so much to hurt their work or the customer but rather to get the hell outta there.

In any case, he did tell my wife (while I was upstairs feeding him cable through the floor) that I seemed picky. She said yep, and she still married anyway.

When I went back down into the crawl space, I said hey Omar, you think I am picky, well he cracked up big time and I could tell he felt comfortable around me at that point.

off to watch so Dish

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SimpleSimon
12-24-05, 02:51 PM
As far as your signal strength goes, installers are told to check just the default transponders.Yeah - DNSC still hasn't learned that odd & even transponders will show differently on DishPro systems. :cool:

Even (1650-2150MHz) is more sensitive to cabling issues.

greatwhitenorth
12-25-05, 12:03 PM
Yeah - DNSC still hasn't learned that odd & even transponders will show differently on DishPro systems. :cool:

Even (1650-2150MHz) is more sensitive to cabling issues.

Actually we have learned that, it's just not all that relevant unless the odds or evens are missing entirely. In 2 years, I've never found an unexpected difference in signal stength between transponders when a check switch returned valid results.

robert koerner
12-25-05, 04:03 PM
Where does one find a <swept spec> for non-mil spec cable?

Does your receiver have a three prong AC cord?

Is the ground to the cold water pipe (copper?) better than the ground in your AC?

Bob

Sitedrifter
12-25-05, 04:20 PM
Where does one find a <swept spec> for non-mil spec cable?

Does your receiver have a three prong AC cord?

Is the ground to the cold water pipe (copper?) better than the ground in your AC?

Bob


1. Swept Spec should be right ont he cable. if not, do not use it!

2. Yes, it is a 3 pronged cord

3. Yes it is better then the A/C ground since there is a direct path to ground and since the cold water pipes (yes, copper) are bonded to my electrical system, it should blow the main breaker if there is a lightning strike as well as send the voltage to the ground.

Maybe I am wrong but I think I may just be saying it slightly off compared to an electrician

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robert koerner
12-26-05, 06:13 PM
Thanks for the coax info.

I never noticed the info on the cable.

So many different meanings of ground, and reasons for connection to an earthen ground.

Bob