My Voom install (thursday march 11)
My Voom install:
Location is about 35 miles East of Atlanta. I got a clear view for both the dish and the ota antenna.
Voom package came in late to the installers so the installer called on saturday march 6th to move the install date from monday, march 8th to thursday march 11th.
Time window was 8am to 12pm. He came around 11:30-ish. Van said Installs Inc on the side. Nice Jamaica man came out and I showed him what my plan was as far as cables go. (cable under crawl space to 2 rooms, where one basically was within reach of the crawlspace opening of the side of the house.). He said that crawlspace or attic installs is $55 per run. (i thought it was included). Anwyays, we drilled holes in the floors and it took me ~3 minutes to go pull the cable in the crawlspace. No big deal, just thought it was included.
He also wanted to pull just one cable to each receiver, and I talked about people having signal loss on the ota part when combining the two into that grey locking box on the back. He said he knew and that he didnt use that box, basically he just used a splitter, with two small cables going to the respective places on the back of the receiver. Ok, at least he knew about the signal loss problem on the lockboxthing on the back. He also said something about it being a different brand, motorola or something, cant remember now.
He had the antenna already assembled to save time and he had a ladder and a charged drill
.
Installed the dish and stealth antenna and we went the hd set to plug it all in. Garbled picture. Thanks to this forum i knew to check for 1080i/720p/etc. My tv cant handle 720p and that is what it was set for. 2 second fix.
He said the activasion on the phone took alot longer than usual (he had installed Voom before)
We get picture and sound on both the hdtv and the sdtv in the other room. Signal quality is around 62-64 on the dish, ota 20
The stealth isnt picking up abc, fox, upn good, cbs is ok. nbc is good, as is tbs and wb36. He tried to wiggle the antenna around but no luck. Btw, he had printed out our address map on antennaweb so he knew where the stations are (all in a single line, all within a few degrees of eachother). Will come back tomorrow/next day and replace the amplifier(?) inside the antenna. If that doesnt work, I have to find a good spot for a bigger antenna. He did try to run the cable straight from the antenna to the receiver, but still the same.
All in all and first impressions:
+ A nice installer, said he was glad I knew about most of the stuff concering voom/signal/basic technical stuff. (i know some, but not all
)
+ A fairly quick install, except for trying to get the ota signal stronger. that took a little while.
- Didnt know if crawl space/attic install was extra, i thought it was included, is it?
+ HD channels look awesome. SD channels really good compared to our cable. Soft, but still clear.
+ Unlike some, i kinda like the remote. Sturdy and heavy. Channel switching is slow, but not the remote's fault. Go Go receiver update!
Ok, thats all i can think of
lengthy read. reply if you feel like it, im off to watch some hd.
EDIT: All atlanta channels were correctly mapped.
EDIT2: Changed location. It's directly EAST of atlanta (tower-wise)
. Since I have been a cable subscriber all my life, I have no clue what to expect or ask the installers. A couple of questions for you (You rock, by the way, for helping everyone out)
