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HDTV upgrade
Does anyone else have HDTV running off a Directv satelite box? I'm scheduled to upgrade on Friday and am looking for any advice or problems to watch for.
They are making me have it "professionally" installed. I installed my original equipment and fixed my dad's setup. So I expect I may have an interesting time with the installer. Especially if the installer was anything like the phone person I talked too. That guy didn't know anything and was arguing with me over what kind of tv I had and what I needed. Geez!
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HDTV upgrade
I will be interested to know what happens. The last unit I bought and installed was to be HDTV ready, all I needed to do was change receivers. I have installed about 4 or 5 unit all together. I was suprised to here that they wanted an installer to do it.
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HDTV upgrade
I heard that Directv is coming out with "Home Media Center" by the end of the year. This will be their Tivo replacement.
This system is supposed to work off your home Computer Network. Making it unnecessary to have dual coax running to each location. Using the network each TV on your system will be Tivo capable from a central box.
I have a one year old Tivo from Directv, and I am going to wait on the HD (don't have a HD TV yet is one reason) as I would like to have the Tivo on all the sets(3).
Dennis
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HDTV upgrade
Dennis, I looked at the TIVO option they have as that would give me HDTV and TIVO. But their discount for me was still way out of my price range. As I'm a long term customer, they dropped their upgrade price on the HDTV receiver and dish. But only after I emailed them to remind them I could get a significantly better deal by switching to their competitor.
I'd love the TIVO, but it's just too expensive for me to get past the boss. I'm surprised I got the HD upgrade slid past. I've had the TV for 2 years, but have needed the receiver to get the HDTV signals. But using the DVD on an HD unit is awesome!
I figure I can wait for the price of the DVR's to come down before I go that route. It will probably take 2-3 years. By then my kid will be old enough to be in control of our lives so TIVO/DVR may be my only option to catch my programming.
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HDTV upgrade
I contacted Directv last year and asked to speak to their customer retention group. They gave me one Tivo receiver and two new receivers for $99 total including installation of the dual Lmb for the dish. I just had to keep it for a year to work off the promotion.
Tivo is awesome, once you have it, you would defintely keep it, and say wow haow did I live without that gadget 
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HDTV upgrade
Dennis I have hdtv on one tv. I know I had to have 3 LNB's on my dish to make it work. I went to Best Buy and bought the receiver. The local dish supplier wouldn't provide and they didn't have any for sale.
I put the new receiver online but the HDTV wouldn't work. The dish supplier sent me a kid to fix it. He couldn't get it to work and told me the receiver was bad. He kept calling the provider and telling them to re send the signal in HDTV. Come to find out he didn't have the coax run correctly. The coax from the LNB's on the dish has to come from an internal switch out there and from there go straight to the receiver. If you want me to look tomorrow I will send you a correct set of directions on how they finally got it right.
If you need me to help you, you could send me your phone number and I could call you if it would help. I had 3 different dish people here before they figured out what they were doing wrong.
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HDTV upgrade
Well, it should be an interesting experience then when the installer shows up tomorrow. So there needs to be 3 lines run from the new dish to the single receiver? Whew!
Usually when there is a problem, it's because things are wired up wrong. My dad wasn't happy with his satelite picture. He tolerated the poor quality. Then I visited and the next morning I saw the picture myself. He had a box of cables. I made him go get it. 5 minutes later I had things re-wired and he was estactic at the improvement.
I hope it goes smoothly. Years of troubleshooting could get me into conflicts with the installer if it doesn't go well at first. Especially if they send a kid. Kind of hard to take them seriously when I was building computers before they were born.
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HDTV upgrade
When we built our house I jammed 18k feet of RG-6 and Cat5 cable into it. Even then I came up one RG-6 short on the satellite dish. Fortunately I ran some empty conduit from the basement to attic to allow easy pulling in of another cable after the fact. After seeing some of the hack jobs installers do to get cable from point A to point B my advice is to run the cable yourself.
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HDTV upgrade
So far so good. The local channels are up and running. One station that didn't come in so good with the analog signal is now really nice with the digital signal. I don't need to run extra cables either. But I'm only running one box so I don't need many. We have chosen to keep the number of TV's in the house down.
Installer had a bad LNB from a earlier job and forgot to pick another up. So he had to run back to his shop to pick one up before we can get the dish portion installed and running.
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HDTV upgrade
Ok, install went quick and easy. Man that picture totally rocks!! Discovery HD is awesome!! This so rocks!!
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