Re: Is This DirecTv Dish Compatible with My Receiver?

frank1492 wrote:
I need this dish for a second vacation house that I have. I will
shuttle the receiver back and forth between houses.
Are these 5-LNB units to be used excusively to receive HD
programming or for more SD? I guess what I should do is get
the 5-LNB dish for my principal residence, since I may go to HD
some day and am there the lion's share of the time. I would
then move my old dish to Maine as it will be used rarely. Does
that make sense?.
Thanks very much!
Frank





On Mon, 08 Oct 2007 22:11:44 -0400, John McGaw <nobody@xxxxxxxx>
wrote:

frank1492 wrote:
I am considering purchase of a DirecTv dish, described as follows on
EBay:

NEW Direct TV HD TRIPLE LNB Satellite Dish DirecTV FTA

I currently have a SD DirecTv subscription and use one of the early
RCA receivers.

Is there any reason why I could not substitute this dish for my
current dish, which is an early single LNB model? I assume there
is backward compatibility of this dish with my equipment, but
just wanted to be sure.

Thanks very much for your help!
Frank
It is probably compatible but you should consider that the current line of DirecTV dishes are 5-LNB slimline units and the older antennas won't work for their newest satellites which are being put into operation this month.


The 5-LNB antennas are used to access the two new satellites but I don't know if these are to be used for HD exclusively. One quirk is that the new antenna weighs at least twice what the old ones did and presents a lot more wind load than the old ones because of their greater area. And to top it off DirecTV won't just let you have an antenna to install yourself as they did with the old ones -- they send out a technician for a no-fee install. There is a big backlog, at least in my area, and the closest appointment I could get was 45+ days from the request.

As chance would have it my installation call was this morning and it took the tech at least two hours to get the antenna in with the larger mount and bracing. I had installed a pair of new cables myself when I bought the new HD DVR receiver so that didn't come into it. The technician did have quite a time getting a good aim on the antenna. His default aiming settings resulted in a really good signal on the 101 satellite which is used for setup but as he was "fine tuning" the aim the antenna flopped because he didn't have the elevation and azimuth (and maybe rotation) bolts tight enough and it took a long time to get back to where he was. But it was probably worth it for the new HD standard-package channels.

--
John McGaw
[Knoxville, TN, USA]
http://johnmcgaw.com
.

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