Suggetions on going to 4 receivers

Hey group, I would love to take my two receiver Dish 500 to four rooms.
I called Dish and they offered me a Dish Player promo they have going on now, it included the PVR and they recommended that I purchase another receiver, use the PVR in my main room, and take the old one for one of the rooms and buy another unit for the fourth room, They told me I needed a Switch 44 to go to four rooms. The total to have the equipment and install was almost $400.00. and I had to promise to stay with them at least one more year.

Question I have is,

What route should I take, remember I have two units and a Dish 500, I hate having to do the install myself, and the PVR seemed pretty neat.

Is the PVR ready for primetime?
Should I wait a while for better things coming down the road?
And what options should I go after?
I would love step by step instructions to make my choice as easy and as cheap as possible.

thanks in advance

You will get varied opinions on the 501 here... I will say that i love mine, and have had no problems.

As far as switches go, that depends. Answer one question first... do i need the programming on the side satellites ( 61.5 or 148 ) ? The programming there are a few cities' local channels, foreign language stuff and HDTV stuff.

If not:

The simplest is the quad lnbf... you pretty much run 1 cable per reciever from the dish to each reciever. No switches to mount, no power inserter for a switch. You could also use a sw44 with a dish500 dish that has 2 dual lnb's... that requires external power and a place to mount the switch.

If yes:

Use a sw64. This unit connects the dish 500 dish with 2 dual lnb's and a dish 300 dish with one dual lnb with your 4 recievers. This requires external power and is a pretty decent-sized unit to mount in a crawl space, etc... but works quite well.

Hope this helps.

I just came from Dish Depot, I was doing some shopping myself :) , I'm not sure you would have to go over there and look for yourself.If I remember right here are some prices of stuff you guys mentioned.

SW 64 Switch Assembly was around $150.00
DISH500 With Quad LNBF (4 Receiver Upgrade Kit)was around $160.00

Ocrashers,

First of all, welcome to DBSTalk.

Neilster1 pretty much nailed your options but to make things simple and if you don't want to do the install yourself, go with what Dish offers you. The PVR 501 (which I assume is the receiver you would be getting) is a good receiver although not perfect.

The other thing you should consider is how much you want to spend. The PVR 721 will soon get released which has a dual tuner so you can record 1 show while recording another at the same time. The 501 won't do that. The 721 will be much more expensive and hopefully a more reliable unit.

It's really up to you but if you want the quick and easy (and cheap) way to get a PVR, take Dish up on their offer.

Another option is selling all of your Dish equipment and switching to DirecTV which has the DirecTivo. Much more realiable unit with a dual tuner. It's also much cheaper. Of course, switching to DirecTV would mean researching their programming packages to make sure they have everything you want. We have a chart on our home page that will help you decide. CLICK HERE (http://home.satx.rr.com/cblount/dbstalk/package_comparison.htm) to see that chart.

Once again, welcome to DBSTalk and don't hesitate to ask questions. We are here to help.

Chris Blount
Administrator
DBSTalk.Com