On their new $1 installation/6 months subscription deal, I just had two Voom receivers, a 24 inch sat. dish, and one of their OTA antennas installed yesterday in Del Mar/Solana Beach. The Voom installer arrived right on time and had all the necessary gear with him. He was very competent and had a portable RF Spectrometer with him to help with the OTA antenna placement and selection. More about this later.
For new Voom customers, I would strongly suggest that you require a 24 inch dish to be installed at your site. Request this PRIOR to your installation date. This will help with continuous reception during rainstorms. The bigger dish apparently also improves the overall signal strength by about about 2-4 percent. The indicated signal strength on both Voom receivers was 98/100. The installer said that he typically gets readings of 95-96 on the smaller 18 inch dishes. There is no extra charge for the 24 inch dish.
The Voom picture is very good quality on my 56 inch 4x3 Panasonic CRT set and on my 50 inch 16x9 Sony rear projection LCD set. I was concerned about typical signal compression artifacts on the big 4x3 set, as I had previously seen them with a short term Dish Network installation on the same set. I can't compare the pictures side by side, but from memory the Voom SD picture is better than the Dish Network SD picture (I had the Dish Network 811 receivers).
On OTA signals, the Voom receivers appear to be very sensitive and perform well with multipath rejection. This was a very pleasant surprise. Both receivers are significantly better than the Samsung T150 OTA receivers that they replaced. I think they are also a little more sensitive than a new LG-3510A receiver that I have also tried in this same location.
At any rate, the Voom receivers pick up a couple of additional channels that the LG and Samsung receivers did not, using the same roof top cables and antennas. I am using a Channel Master 4248 in one location and a no-name ten year old RS UHF/VHF smallish combo antenna in the other location. On both receivers, I receive every San Diego area digital station with no dropouts, except for XETV, which is located about 35 miles south of me in Tijuana.
Since the installer had his RF Spectrometer with him, we tried out the Voom-supplied Wineguard Square Shooter antenna in the same location of the old Radio Shack combo antenna. While the gain was not as good on most UHF stations as the bigger antenna, the Square Shooter got acceptable results from one location and its much wider beamwidth (approx 45 degrees in azimuth) allowed it to be pointed in one direction for all stations in my area (13-30 miles distance from me). The Square Shooter antenna is quite small (about 1 foot square) and would be ideal for OTA reception in apartments. The installer told me that it has worked well for digital television reception in many San Diego locations for him. Voom uses other, larger OTA antennas such as UHF bowtie antennas for more difficult locations. All of these antennas are included in the $1 installation deal, which I find hard to believe.
The Spectrometer is really the way to go for dicey UHF installations, it allows you to hold the antenna by hand and move it around on the roof, rotate it or move it up/down for best reception on any desired channel. It also allows direct quantitative signal strength comparisons between different antennas. It sure beats the old guy on the roof, wife on the walkie talkie, looking at the TV method of antenna placement.
Is Voom worth it? Well, that is too soon to tell for me, but my wife likes the content, the installation was very professional and the signal quality is better than I expected (I have had a 13 foot C band antenna with an 4DTV receiver for many years, so my video standards are high). BTW, both Voom receivers upgraded themselves last night from the 6.00 baseline software to the most current 7.26 software. This was requested by the installer earlier in the day, but occurred with no actions required on my part, since the update occurred sometime after midnight.
I guess the best commentary came from the installer himself. He has been installing DirectTV, DishNetwork and other TV systems in the area for several years. He currently has both DishNetwork and Voom at his house; but he likes Voom much better because of the HD content, picture quality, and the OTA performance of the Voom receivers. He said he became a Voom installer three days after he tried the system last July.
PM me if you would like installer/retailer info in the San Diego area or more details on my installation experience.
