Installed a SuperDish Today Saturday 11/15/03

[Guest]

Saturday 11/15/03

A friend of mine went to our local DishNetwork Dealer and purchased a Superdish this morning.

We are going to get our locals on Satellite 105 ( Mobile AL. / Pensacola FL. ) the 20th of this month and he did not want to wait for the free upgrade from Dish or have any programing commitment or sign up for Credit Card Autopay. The Superdish he got is the 105 type 2. Total cost was $199.00 plus tax.

Installation.

I went down to his house and helped him with the installation. The Superdish came with a beefed up wall mount..... ( The superdish mount looks identical to the Dish 500 mount Only Larger -- pipe is 2 3/8"od ) We were able to take down his Dish 500 and install the New Superdish Mount in the same location. Changing the mount and preparing three new coax cables took about 30 minutes. Assembling, Mounting, and Adjusting the Superdish took about another hour. He has two Satellite Receivers. A PVR501 which is a Dish Pro Receiver and a 5000 which is a Legacy Receiver. The 3 Lnb's on the Superdish are Dish Pro and will only work with Dish Pro Receivers (unless you install a Dish Pro Adapter) so we only hooked up his PVR501 Dish Pro Receiver...... The software on his 5000 is not upgradeable to the Superdish so he is waiting for Charlie to offer an upgrade on his 5000 before he puts a 2nd receiver back in service.

All and all the installation is simple...... No more difficult than installing a dish 500...... just one additional step to peak the alignment for the 105 satellite..... No reason at all the average Joe could not install this system himself. Before setting the Superdish on the mount we set the Skew and Elevation for our area.... once we had the DP34 switch hooked up, all we had to do was rotate the dish on the mount and Bingo we had a strong signal on the 119 LNB..... we then switched to the 105 LNB and made a slight adjustment to the elevation and then locked everything down on the dish...... back inside we ran a switch check which showed 119, 110, and 105 Satellites Locked.

We went to the Superdish Welcome Channel ( Channel 7000 ) and had a perfect picture. The average signal strength on the 105 satellite was about 74 and about 120 on the 119 and 110 satellites. So he is ready to call DishNetwork this Thursday to have his Locals turned on. He is going to eventually upgrade to a 921 for High Definition and will use his Dish 500 for receiving the HD Channels that are on Satellite 61.5.... That is, when the Dish Pro 44 Switch becomes available.

The Superdish looked great and now works great..... It was a fun day..... Im going to call the same local DishNetwork Dealer Monday and see if he can set me up with the Free Superdish Upgrade and also see if he will let me do the install myself. I have a PVR721 and look forward to being able to record and time shift my locals.

Here's a list of what comes with the Superdish.

Wall / Roof Mounting Bracket
Superdish and all assembly hardware
Dish Pro LNB Assembly for 105 / 110 / 119 satellites
3 piece LNB Rain Shield
Dish Pro 34 Switch.

Keep in mind if you plan to do an install yourself that all 3 LNB's with the Superdish are "Dish Pro" and the 34 Switch is "Dish Pro" and will only work with a "Dish Pro Receiver" or will require a Dish Pro / Legacy adapter to work with Non Dish Pro Receivers..... also keep in mind that some Satellite Receivers ( like the 5000 ) are not Software Upgradeable and will not work with a Superdish configuration.

Hope this information helps. Sorry No Pictures at this time.

 

[video62]

...The software on his 5000 is not upgradeable to the Superdish so he is waiting for Charlie to offer an upgrade on his 5000 before he puts a 2nd receiver back in service.

Be prepared for a loooooooong wait.

Thanks for the detailed report!!

 

[ROLLTIDE]

What dealer did you get it from and can you post a phone number?

 

[sclaws]

What dealer did you get it from and can you post a phone number?

I 2nd this request for info..if there's a retailer selling them w/o required install...hmmm 8)

 

[ROLLTIDE]

I guess I will call around the Mobile area untill I find someone that knows what the superdish is .

 

[James Long]

The software on his 5000 is not upgradeable to the Superdish so he is waiting for Charlie to offer an upgrade on his 5000 before he puts a 2nd receiver back in service.

Based on the tech chat, shouldn't you be able to use the 5000 for all channels except 105º/121º?

JL

 

[LarryG]

I had SD installed today (11/16) install went smooth until called E to have locals turn on and their system is down and could not get them on at this time. Called back about and hour later, still down.
The SD is no big deal, install went very smooth, I had already mounted the base plate to the chimmy and was ready for local dealer, Now to get E up and running.

 

[Stargazer]

Professional installation is required. I wonder if some CSR's will not activate if they find out that it was not professionaly installed?

 

[Guest]

What dealer did you get it from and can you post a phone number?

The dealer he bought the Superdish from is Baldwin Satellite Systems in Summerdale Sorry I don't have the phone number.

It is my understanding that Baldwin Sat Sys will sell the Superdish out right for a self install $199.00 However, If you go with the Free Superdish Upgrade the dealer is required to do the install for warranty purposes. Also they can not do an upgrade if they did not do the original system install. They have to refer the customer to a company in Mobile that is contracted with Dish for those upgrades.

Hope this info helps

 

[ROLLTIDE]

And what company is it in Mobile ?

 

[Guest]

The software on his 5000 is not upgradeable to the Superdish so he is waiting for Charlie to offer an upgrade on his 5000 before he puts a 2nd receiver back in service.

Based on the tech chat, shouldn't you be able to use the 5000 for all channels except 105º/121º?

JL

Yes , But only if he gets a Dish Pro to Legacy adaptor..... which he is not willing to pay for. Thats why he is going to wait and see if Dish offers an upgrade for his 5000.

 

[Guest]

And what company is it in Mobile ?

I think they said the company in Mobile is Satellites Unlimited..... I have never heard of them and don't see them listed on the online Dishnetwork Dealer Locator...... If you find a number for them please let me know.

Thanks

 

[Bobby]

And what company is it in Mobile ?

I think they said the company in Mobile is Satellites Unlimited..... I have never heard of them and don't see them listed on the online Dishnetwork Dealer Locator...... If you find a number for them please let me know.

Thanks

(251) 340-8313

 

[Bobby]

What dealer did you get it from and can you post a phone number?

The dealer he bought the Superdish from is Baldwin Satellite Systems in Summerdale Sorry I don't have the phone number.

It is my understanding that Baldwin Sat Sys will sell the Superdish out right for a self install $199.00 However, If you go with the Free Superdish Upgrade the dealer is required to do the install for warranty purposes. Also they can not do an upgrade if they did not do the original system install. They have to refer the customer to a company in Mobile that is contracted with Dish for those upgrades.

Hope this info helps

Tel number for Baldwin in Summerdale: (251) 989-2188

 

[LarryG]

BTW the dealer did NOT want my old equipment.

 

[ROLLTIDE]

I'm going to call them and try to get my superdish for free by getting the HD pack for 1 year. And I will also see if they will point my dish 500 at 61.5

Then I will be happy untill I get the 921

 

[RJS]

He didn't take mine either. I wonder if Dish will tell him he has to take it?

 

[Barry Erick]

Professional installation is required. I wonder if some CSR's will not activate if they find out that it was not professionaly installed?

Well, I installed my DirecTV skewed dish when I purchased my HD/DirecTV receiver and had already installed a second dish to get 119 as I could not see 101 and 119 from the same spot due to a tree line. The 119 is mounted in the tree line. Then came along the 110 "C" sat and I installed that.
So that says I can't install the Superdish? Bunk.

 

[SimpleSimon]

There's a bit of a difference between ordinary circular polarization installs and FSS, but maybe you can teach yourself.

 

[Pepper]

Just wanted to put in my positive input here.

I had a superdish install scheduled for last month. The deciding factor was the hurricane. Cable TV was out for about a week and one of the major broadcast towers was reduced in height by 2/3 so local channels were a problem. So while sitting in my hot, non-air-conditioned house, reading satelliteguys by candlelight and watching Dish, we made the decision to get locals from Dish. [DSL and Dish never went down once I got the generator connected]

Gaines from Satellites Unlimited came out and looked around and told me he couldn't get line of sight. Understandable, there were a lot of trees so we rescheduled the install. We needed an excuse to take a few down anyway, now maybe we can actually get some grass to grow in the front yard.

The guy lives just a few streets over and is quite nice and seems to know his stuff. So when the national DNSC organization sent their troops for post-hurricane repair and new installs for livid cable customers, they kept calling to see when they could come install it for me. I just politely told them I have a local guy that's scheduled to do it when I get the trees trimmed. I didn't want to get stuck with any of the horror stories I've read about when the out-of-town guys come in and throw stuff together.

Anyway, with that done, he came out again, and had me hooked up in quick order, even threw in the DPP44 switch I needed for the extra 61.5 dish (I was expecting to have to shell out big bucks for that one). To his credit, he was meticulous about grounding everything. Even let me help to speed up the process before it was too dark to see, and let me keep all the old equipment including the SW64 which is headed to ebay soon. He called in and my locals were activated instantly.

The only possible technical glitch was that we re-used the old RG6 from the switch to the receiver, it was not rated at 2150MHz but appears to work fine. I ran all that stuff myself years ago and would not be too heartbroken if I end up having to replace it later.

I also know now why I had so much trouble with my primestar legacy superdish that I could never get to lock on 105... seems the mount was a bit low so I was aiming into the roof instead of over it. duh!

Anyway, this was overall an excellent, very professional install. I recommend Gaines, and Satellites Unlimited (Mobile, AL) very highly.