Switch to Dish?

[heisman]

Was thinking about a switch to Dish from Comcast based on price. I had a couple of questions that I hoped someone could answer for me. First, does the dish look the same as a Direct tv dish, and does it face the same direction? Second, I have heard that they are the only provider that will let you switch out channels. For example, I could get top 100 pack and switch out something like Lifetime for ESPNU. Is this true? Also, how is the quality of their HD? I have seen Direct tv Hd and it looks ED compared to Comcast's HD. Thank you for taking time out to help me.

[John79605]

"I have heard that they are the only provider that will let you switch out channels."

I've never heard of switching out channels, but there are three or four a la carte channels available for $1.50 to $10 a month.

[James Long]

:welcome_s heisman
E* (Echostar/Dish Network) and D* (DirecTV) have similar dishes ... to a certain extent. D* is introducing a larger dish to receive all of it's HD offerings, E* newest "large" dish isn't much bigger than a D* "Phase III" dish.

Aiming is similar too ... For E* you need to see "110°, 119° and 129°" satellite locations - most of D* is 9° to the east at "110°, 110° and 119°". Aiming is generally south-southwest for both systems. You can check the D* forums to see where D* is putting new HD that might change that (if you are interested in D*).

Neither provider allows you to switch out channels. The packages are set. There are a few channels that can be added on an individual basis (at extra cost), but no swapping is allowed.

[heisman]

Thank you for the welcome. Dishnet pricing almost seems too good to be true. My new condo is already equipped with direct tv, so I think they could just swap out the dishes and keep the same wiring which I really like. I'm just hoping their HD channels look a heck of alot better than direct tv's.

[Mike D-CO5]

Thank you for the welcome. Dishnet pricing almost seems too good to be true. My new condo is already equipped with direct tv, so I think they could just swap out the dishes and keep the same wiring which I really like. I'm just hoping their HD channels look a heck of alot better than direct tv's.


Oh they will and do look better . :D

[bderouen]

Thank you for the welcome. Dishnet pricing almost seems too good to be true. My new condo is already equipped with direct tv, so I think they could just swap out the dishes and keep the same wiring which I really like. I'm just hoping their HD channels look a heck of alot better than direct tv's.

From my experience, Dish's HD's look a lot better than Direct's, which blows the heck out of Cox's (our local cable) HD!

welcome!

[heisman]

Someone told me that dishnet needs more than one dish. Is that true? That could put a monkey in my wrench. These things are ugly enough with only one.

[bderouen]

Someone told me that dishnet needs more than one dish. Is that true? That could put a monkey in my wrench. These things are ugly enough with only one.

Not always. it kind of depends on what your line of site is. In my case, I had to have a 2nd dish because satellite 129 would not come in at my house due to it's position in the sky related to the trees I have on my property. They mounted a 2nd dish right by the first one, which was on my roof and it comes in great. It doens't look bad at all, in my opinion, anyway.

The way I look at it, Dish has so many more HD channels than Direct, they have to come down somewhere!! I have no idea if that's true or not, but that's just the perspective I choose to take! :lol:

[Mike D-CO5]

The new dish 1000.2 sat dish gets a better strength than the traditional dish 1000. It has a bigger dish width and height and it has a longer mast for the lnb, so the signal is stronger on all 3 sats 110/119/129. Also a plus is you can hook up another side sat dish for another satellite and plug it into the port of the dish 1000.2. Then you can run one coax into your house and split it into 2 cables for a dual tuner using a dishpro plus seperator.

[heisman]

I would like to thank everyone for their help. I went ahead and signed up online. I decided to pay the $50 for no commitment just in case I don't like it.