Trying to do my homework before switching to Dish

idk. Owner of my local installer, or a family member, used to live right across the street from me. I saw their trucks every day. 10 years ago whe we thought 5e would be extinct. I wired a LOT of houses in my subadition with cat 6. No easy task with the early cat 6, which was a hot B* to terminate.

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Serendipitous arrival of a Dish $300 gift card offer in yesterday’s mail. From years active on the DTv/ATT forums, I know their version of this offer is potholed with catches and exclusions. Any pitfalls I should be aware of with this offer?
I’m guessing my local retailer can hold my hand through the redemption process. Will I still be able to choose an H3 and J3 or do these offers require base equipment? Couldn’t get much out of the small print on the offer - but I think that’s the idea...

I had no issues using the $300 gift card and getting a H3 and J3 for free, but this was a year ago. I was also able to get an additional $100 ($10 month) off my bill using a neighbors referral number. I called the Dish number that came with the gift card.
 
Made it into the local installer yesterday. Very helpful young girl, but not knowledgeable at all, and forthright enough to admit it.

Was OK with the pricing. Equipment, per the summary she printed, will be the a Hopper 3 and a Joey 3.0. Dish 1000.2.

Monthly equipment fees after discounts $15.
Monthly service $54.99 (America’s top 120, $47.99, -$5 autopay, +$12 local channels) Taxes/fees $2.32.
The $300 card offer will further drop my total by about $12.50 mo. prorated over the 2 year contract.

I’d really like to lose that $12 local channel fee - both for the savings and for the reliability of an OTA, over the dish, for our frequent Oklahoma severe weather.

The sales girl was clueless as to whether they even offered a local OTA option at install.

I‘ve read a few of the OTA threads here then utilized an “aiming” website, that indicates I should be able to just get by with a window mount antenna - though I’d prefer exterior wall mount version, if there is such a thing, - esthetics and to gain a few extra feet of mounting height. Looks like an AirTV dual tuner is the most popular adapter.

I’m assuming only the H3 needs the OTA feed, no splitter to the Joey 3.0

Am I leaving anything on the table with the offer. I’m 58, she asked me my age and mentioned the 55 discount, but I don’t see that discount on the summary breakdown - is that the norm? Can (will?) the local installer handle the OTA hook-up if I pre-purchase the adapter and install the OTA antenna myself. Finally, is there an exterior wall mount OTA that’s similar to a window mount, that anyone here has experience with And would recommend?

Thanks again to everyone for all the help walking me through this process.
 
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Made it into the local installer yesterday. Very helpful young girl, but not knowledgeable at all, and forthright enough to admit it.

Was OK with the pricing. Equipment, per the summary she printed, will be the a Hopper 3 and a Joey 3.0. Dish 1000.2.

Monthly equipment fees after discounts $15.
Monthly service $54.99 (America’s top 120, $47.99, -$5 autopay, +$12 local channels) Taxes/fees $2.32.
The $300 card offer will further drop my total by about $12.50 mo. prorated over the 2 year contract.

I’d really like to lose that $12 local channel fee - both for the savings and for the reliability of an OTA, over the dish, for our frequent Oklahoma severe weather.

The sales girl was clueless as to whether they even offered a local OTA option at install.

I‘ve read a few of the OTA threads here then utilized an “aiming” website, that indicates I should be able to just get by with a window mount antenna - though I’d prefer exterior wall mount version, if there is such a thing, - esthetics and to gain a few extra feet of mounting height. Looks like an AirTV dual tuner is the most popular adapter.

I’m assuming only the H3 needs the OTA feed, no splitter to the Joey 3.0

Am I leaving anything on the table with the offer. I’m 58, she asked me my age and mentioned the 55 discount, but I don’t see that discount on the summary breakdown - is that the norm? Can (will?) the local installer handle the OTA hook-up if I pre-purchase the adapter and install the OTA antenna myself. Finally, is there an exterior wall mount OTA that’s similar to a window mount, that anyone here has experience with And would recommend?

Thanks again to everyone for all the help walking me through this process.
The tech should have OTA's and Adapters and can do the sale and installation. If not, he can get a W/O set up and get the equipment for you
 
Made it into the local installer yesterday. Very helpful young girl, but not knowledgeable at all, and forthright enough to admit it.

Was OK with the pricing. Equipment, per the summary she printed, will be the a Hopper 3 and a Joey 3.0. Dish 1000.2.

Monthly equipment fees after discounts $15.
Monthly service $54.99 (America’s top 120, $47.99, -$5 autopay, +$12 local channels) Taxes/fees $2.32.
The $300 card offer will further drop my total by about $12.50 mo. prorated over the 2 year contract.

I’d really like to lose that $12 local channel fee - both for the savings and for the reliability of an OTA, over the dish, for our frequent Oklahoma severe weather.

The sales girl was clueless as to whether they even offered a local OTA option at install.

I‘ve read a few of the OTA threads here then utilized an “aiming” website, that indicates I should be able to just get by with a window mount antenna - though I’d prefer exterior wall mount version, if there is such a thing, - esthetics and to gain a few extra feet of mounting height. Looks like an AirTV dual tuner is the most popular adapter.

I’m assuming only the H3 needs the OTA feed, no splitter to the Joey 3.0

Am I leaving anything on the table with the offer. I’m 58, she asked me my age and mentioned the 55 discount, but I don’t see that discount on the summary breakdown - is that the norm? Can (will?) the local installer handle the OTA hook-up if I pre-purchase the adapter and install the OTA antenna myself. Finally, is there an exterior wall mount OTA that’s similar to a window mount, that anyone here has experience with And would recommend?

Thanks again to everyone for all the help walking me through this process.

Yes, only the H3 needs the OTA connection. You should probably ask the girl at your retailer's to have a tech call you to discuss anything she didn't know about. :)
 
The dual tuner OTA adapter sold by Dish is $59.99.

The picture in the Dish Store on line is incorrect, the dual adapter you want has a 6 inch attached USB cable on the USB end not a direct connector to the H3.

AirTV (www.airTV.net) sells an OTA adapter that has the same internals but it is white and is only $29.99 - everyone says they both work the same. Here's a picture of the AirTV version
dual-tuner-adapter.png
 
Yes, that’s the adapter I’d planned on getting. Will the installer balk at using a non-Dish branded adapter?

I’ve been trying to research OTA exterior mount antennas. All locals I’m interested in are out of OKC and all are clustered within a 5° compass arc 292-297° Unfortunately the wall directly behind my front room tv points 340°, so I don’t think I can get away with using a Antennas Direct Clear Stream “35mi” flat on that exterior wall.
 
Yes, that’s the adapter I’d planned on getting. Will the installer balk at using a non-Dish branded adapter?

I’ve been trying to research OTA exterior mount antennas. All locals I’m interested in are out of OKC and all are clustered within a 5° compass arc 292-297° Unfortunately the wall directly behind my front room tv points 340°, so I don’t think I can get away with using a Antennas Direct Clear Stream “35mi” flat on that exterior wall.

Do you have an attic? I have a CM4228 in my attic.
 
I do have an attic and had considered that.
I did a full rewire on my house a couple of summers ago. I tried to future proof it with 2 redundant pulls of Cat6 to the area behind the front room TV, but (foolishly) only a single RG6 pull. I don't think it would be possible to drop or fish another coax cable down from the attic, through the wall, at this point. Which is why I’d hoped to come in through the exterior wall with the new OTA cable.
 
Yes, that’s the adapter I’d planned on getting. Will the installer balk at using a non-Dish branded adapter?
The installer may be ok with installing the AirTV adapter, but if he isn't, it's a simple USB plug-in device with the antenna coax screwed on the other end. The receiver will recognize it with no setting changes needed.
 
I made the switch the end of last month and so far I'm happy the price savings over a 2 year contract are almost $1300 over what I would have been paying for direcTV. I had dish 20 years ago up to 2010 and switched away from them to Direct when they dropped my local reginal sports network so I lost NHl hockey games for my team (sabres) 9 years later direcTV jacked up my bill $55.00 a month so.. I said see yah. Dish still doesn't have MSG but there are so many streaming options today that there wasn't back in 2010 I'm glad I made the switch back. direct could have cared less that I dropped them . only complaint besides the no MSG network is their OTA tuner system is pretty poor quality …
 
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I made the switch the end of last month and so far I'm happy the price savings over a 2 year contract are almost $1300 over what I would have been paying for direcTV. I had dish 20 years ago up to 2010 and switched away from them to Direct when they dropped my local reginal sports network so I lost NHl hockey games for my team (sabres) 9 years later direcTV jacked up my bill $55.00 a month so.. I said see yah. Dish still doesn't have MSG but there are so many streaming options today that there wasn't back in 2010 I'm glad I made the switch back. direct could have cared less that I dropped them . only complaint besides the no MSG network is their OTA tuner system is pretty poor quality …
I grew up in Alden!! Go Sabres!
 
figured you had to have some kind of a tie to WNY with that profile picture. ….. Yes one town east of mine.
The Sabres are up and down this year I'm hoping for at least a playoff birth. they are in 3'rd place in the Atlantic division as of today! :)
 
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figured you had to have some kind of a tie to WNY with that profile picture. ….. Yes one town east of mine.
The Sabres are up and down this year I'm hoping for at least a playoff birth. they are in 3'rd place in the Atlantic division as of today! :)
I've been watching. I was going to order NHL Ticket but when they started to drop, I held back.
 
Sorry to hijack the hijack ;).
Saw another post that mentioned using a single coax to the H3 and a diplexer to run the Dish feed and a passive OTA feed together. This is something I could do easily if it’s workable. All my cabling originates from a networking niche in the spare BR. Would just need to mount the OTA antenna in the attic and run the coax down to the niche through an existing pvc pipe I installed for that purpose.
Are there downsides to doing this?
 
Sorry to hijack the hijack ;).
Saw another post that mentioned using a single coax to the H3 and a diplexer to run the Dish feed and a passive OTA feed together. This is something I could do easily if it’s workable. All my cabling originates from a networking niche in the spare BR. Would just need to mount the OTA antenna in the attic and run the coax down to the niche through an existing pvc pipe I installed for that purpose.
Are there downsides to doing this?
It won't work with a Hopper. The Diplexer interrupts the Moca connection
 

Pioneer plasma tv and Hopper

Diplex with powered OTA and Wally