Upgrading my Dish Service

[Dick Simonis]

Since I've had the Dish service in my RV's (and now the Beaver) I've been moving my VIP 722K receiver back and forth between house and MH.  Kind of a pain after awhile what with remembering what remotes work where and all.

So, today I made the decision to get a dedicated receiver for the MH, called Dish and ordered two Hoppers.  It was a bit of a surprise that they didn't give any grieve about keeping the MH on the same account and just charging an extra $10.00/month for the extra receiver.  I used the "it's a guest facility" argument and they were OK with that.

The only small problem I have not yet come to grips with is the bedroom TV which worked OK with the 722 but, being it's still the old Sony analog won't work with the Hopper and the new receiver doesn't have a home distribution outlet.  I have a couple of possible options in that I plan on upgrading to an HDTV soon (have one in the garage) or possibly taping off the the HDMI to the front TV with a splitter and an HDMI to coax adapter.  No idea if that will work but may be worth a try.  Since we don't use the bedroom TV much it's not a big deal but still one to resolve.

Hopefully all will work well and my Winguard dish will be OK.  It looks identical to the one on the house so I'm hopeful.

If anyone else has taken this route, I'd appreciate any words of wisdom.  They will be out tomorrow so....fingers are crossed.

[William Brosam]

only issue to look into is if your dish does not have 3 lnb's or cant connect to atleast 3 satellites at once you cant record on more then 1 satellite at a time.

i was looking at direct tv and their HD you cannot get with a dome have to use the 1700$ wineguard dish or use a house dish on a tripod no other optios for direct tv HD

Dish HD is more forgiving.

[Dick Simonis]

I have the winguard 3 LNB dish so it should be OK.  The techs came out yesterday to do the install but found out that the CS rep had given me some bum info on transferring recorded programs.  She said the techs would do that but the reality was that I had to buy an external HD and download the programs than upload to the Hopper.  The kicker was that the HD had to have external power not powered through the USB part.  Upside was that Dish volunteered to pay for the HP with a $20.00 monthly credit.

Found a 2 TB HD at Walmart yesterday and did the download...17 hrs.  Once I figured out how to do it this will be a nine feature as the house programs can be transferred to the MH Hopper or just played right off the HD.

Scheduled the install for today so my fingers remain crossed.  One of the most amazing part of this whole project is how easy Dish has been to work with.  When the techs were here yesterday I asked how to make the rear TV (analog) work and they said "no problem" we just connect a Joey to the the existing  digital to analog box and all will be fine.  I'm holding off on that but it was refreshing to hear.