Let me tell you my experience: I wanted a BUD so bad to watch a channel from my country that I started looking on ebay to see if some one will sell something cheap in the city I live at (because they only do local pick up). No luck.
Then I decided to start driving around looking for BUD. I would stop at each house and ask them if they wanted to sell it. 2 people said yes and never call me back, then I called them and they said they were going to call me back and still never called me. Then on a lucky day, I stopped at this house and the lady gave it to me for FREE, yes for free. I uninstalled it myself and we put it on top of my friends truck and move it to my house. THen I have invested some money and time, a lot of time to get it going:
1) 17 feet 3.5 pipe with bracket and delivery ... $210
2) Pansat 3500S receiver .... $180
3) 100 feet cable ... $60
4) Good Ladder ... $100
5) Digged a 4 feet hole. Took me about 3 hrs.
6) 11 bags of concrete (60 lbs each), 6 feet ground pole, cooper cable, ground clamp .... $100
7) Set the bracket, stand the pole, Mix the concrete, etc (that was hard work) all saturday last weekend.
8) New C/Ku lnb and Feedhorn ...$ 150
9) Vbox .... $55
10) Install the new C/Ku feedhorn, and cables, center lnb, etc took me like 3 hrs yesterday
11) I just went to buy several pieces of wood to make kind of scaffolding to get up there to install the dish on the pole hopefully tomorrow. $200
12) And the mos important, I have spent a lot of time readying and trying to understand before buying.
13) Connectors, sealant, etc little stuff about $20
I am so far happy with all I have done and I am not seeing any tv yet. But the time spent learning, reading, and trying to do it myself with all the member's help from this site has been great.