Got my new dish on Saturday morning, what a beauty! It is the black 1000.4. My installer was very, very good. Could not have been happier and I have to admit this part worried me as you never know who you may get. He ended up being either a supervisor or manager, can't remember which. He installed a new mount as he recommended not using the existing 15 year old mount. Also replaced the wiring from the Dish to the side of house with the double line, rather than the older single stuff I have had since the beginning. (We only use a single 622.)
He took some photos of the old/new mount and was showing me as we waited for the check-switch to finish. Asked him if he could email them and he said SURE! (very nice). He also put little blue footies over his shoes before he came it.
One thing I was eager to try was ESPNU. I have read numerous reports here that SD from EA was noticeably better. I made a point to watch it just before the swapout. Well, I have to admit that it really didn't change much. <RANT> I don't understand why they can't dedicate even just a little bit more bandwidth to this channel - ESPECIALLY with their issues getting ESPNU-HD. SD has the potential to look pretty good - I think back to the preHD Survivor days as an example of how good SD can look. Anywho..... </RANT>
The first problem I noticed was that the favorites lists dropped the satellite locals, so I added the new HD equiv back. Not a problem. I peaked at the TIMERS listing screen and as suggested above it looked the same.
It wasn't until Sunday morning when looking at the actual timer schedule for the week that I noticed many missing recordings. It turned out that under the TIMERS list when I selected ANY local channel program that there were no actual upcoming timers. So I ended up having to delete/re-add all the local channel timers. (Not a big deal as I would just hit SEARCH while on the dead timer and then pick the new one from the results) As I did this I noticed the white HD to the right of each listing within the TIMERS list. So just a heads up that - at least for me - a WA/EA swap-out will require rescheduling any local channel timers.
As I was fixing all the local network timers I thought about how easy this was going to be (hopefully!) when the Hopper/PTA come out. (Actually, being HOPPER READY was the main thing that finally got me to get this EA switch done.)
I do have to add that the local HD channels look just as good as my OTA equivalents, at least with my informal back and forth 46" testing. That was impressive. It will be nice to finally have ALL local recordings in HD. I usually have 2 timers for each local show - first the OTA one and then the SAT equiv. Works pretty well as it will try to use the OTA tuner first but if not avail it just automatically takes a sat tuner. So it wasn't unusual to have SD stuff record on a busy recording night.
