Waiting for Installation & Have Some Questions

[BillWalker]

I have an installation scheduled for tomorrow afternoon and have a couple of questions. I have never had satellite before and really never been around it enough to know much. I was attracted by the concept of whole house DVR and PTAT. My current questions are:

Where should I locate the Hopper? We watch 75% of our TV in the den but the big TV is in the Rec Room. We go up there to watch movies and special shows or when there's a crowd. Is there any reason to locate the Hopper in either place? Should it be where we use it the most or does it matter?

What's the deal with the USB OTA dongle? I apparently get all of the locals from Dish so what's the advantage of having the dongle? Does it allow for local channel reception when there are weather problems?

Thanks in advance for the help. I've really learned a lot over the last week or so reading the threads here and on the DirecTV forums.

Happy Friday Eve!

Bill

 

[garys]

The only concerns I would have about the Hopper placement is 1. if you make use of the PIP feature or 2. if you plan to make use of Bluetooth to use with wireless headphones. Only the Hopper does both of these things while a Joey will not do either. If you don't think you'd use either, it really doesn't matter what gets placed where. And while PTAT will give you the Four Networks on one tuner, you may be in need of an additional local recorded or you may receive some channels that Dish does not supply (in my area, Dish supplies 8 locals while OTA gives me another 6 and one of the Dish supplied locals is in sd and I can get HD from the OTA.

 

[Smwoodward]

Or if you have a tv that you want HD and don't have an hdmi on that TV. The joeys don't have other connections but hdmi and composite.

 

[BillWalker]

Thanks for the replies. That's what I needed to know.