Standard Def on HD Receiver w/Dish 500 Dish?

[noibs]

An old 508 receiver of mine has a hard drive that is beginning to fail (again).

We have a dual LNB Dish 500 dish currently driving two 508 receivers.

I was thinking about about a 612HD or 622HD receiver to replace the bad 508. I'm not currently interested in HD programming and know that with a HD receiver if you don't subscribe to a HD package you still get charged $7 per month. I can live with that. If I got the 622 I would only be using one tuner.

In any event, I live pretty deep in the Rocky Mountains. The ground is frozen solid and there is 3 feet of snow on top of the ground. I'm not going to be changing my dish until late March at the earliest.

If I get a 612 or 622, can I just plug in the lead from the Dish 500 and still get all my standard def programming?

 

[garys]

Both tuners need to be connect on dual tuner receivers. They may work fine at the start, but they develope problems quickly. Also, I don't see why you want to pay more money for what you are already receiving. You would be better off getting a 522 or a 625 replacing your problem receiver and a second one and save yourself an additional receiver fee.

 

[TheKrell]

Don't forget the DVR fees! Your 508's don't incur that.

Note that the Yahoo group Dishmod has instructions and help replacing the disk in our old DVRs. afb has even replaced a number of the tuner chips which fail on the 50x series.