Equipment, Antenna farms & costs.

[Mark_AR]

OK, I'm the newbie, :shock: but I have been reading this forum now for about a week and have noticed several people with multiple set-ups, home made antenna farms and several STB's.

I am intrigued by the cost that each of you must incur for hardware plus programming fees. Just the SW64's are 100 bux a pop.

It could be enough to be the fiscal budget of some 3rd world countries, right?

Or am I missing something here?

 

[Mr Tony]

Welcome Mark!

You're right. It can get spendy. It all depends on what deals you can get or what you can rig up.

As an example, I have both Dish Network & Bell ExpressVu. My 4 receivers with Dish are 2 301's, a 5000, and a 4000. The 301's came free with a 1 yr commit, the 5000 was purchased from someone cheap and the 4000 I got on a trade for some extra satellite parts. So my Dish equipment cost was about 35 bucks.

The ExpressVu receiver did cost me around 160 bucks. That is brand new. I already had a extra dish (Dish installed an extra dish for one of my locals at 61.5, but it moved to the 110 slot a month later, so the dish became expendable). EBay is real good if you are looking for a deal.

The programming fees are what nails most of us. I was paying around $150 bucks for both Dish & Bell, but cut some programming and now Ive got it down to about $75.

I guess it all comes down to how much expendable money you have.

 

[bcwmachine]

For me, It's a 10 year collection of misc. stuff.
DirecTV
DirecPC (one way)---Internet, replaced 26400 modem
Nebulink's predecessor---Internet, replaced DirecPC
Dish 500 (With the DirecTV dish for 148), replaced DirecTV
StarBand---Internet and Dish 500, replaced Nebulink predecessor and Dish500 dish
Wireless for internet, replaced StarBand
-------------------------------------------------
What I'm running right now,
Wireless for internet
Dish 500 dish using dish LNB's from StarBand setup
DirecPC dish for 148
StarBand dish with Eagle Aspen P270KU LNB for 105
SW64 and SW21's for 4 sat (all legacy)
The only cost for 105 was the P270KU LNB, everything else was pulled down from the loft in my shop. (Before I got the P270KU, I made sure it would work using the LNB from the DirecPC, the DirecPC LNB is a voltage switched H/V polarization, but only had one output, the P270KU has dual outputs and is voltage switched H/V)

 

[Stargazer]

A lot of people do this for a hobby and will spend the extra bucks on the hardware and programming just to have the satisfaction of knowing they have it all or have a lot. I dont see it any different than someone going and buying a car that costs $1,000 or $2,000 that has additional features or buying a computer to play with. Also if people have an expensive tv such as a bigscreen or plasma then they feel as if they should have some hardware such as several satellite receivers to bring the most of their investment.

 

[Claude Greiner]

http://www.dishretailer.com/antennafarm.html
http://www.dishretailer.com/superdish/