Anyone familiar with the Smartbox? I had an installer come onsite yesterday to our property to look at upgrading our TV service in our 60 room hotel and large casino floor to HD. I really like the Smartbox because I can consolidate two racks of analog equipment into 5U of space.
I was told to be legit, I need two Smartboxes. One Smartbox serving the hotel rooms with Pro:Iridium enabled. A second Smartbox one serving the casino floors, Pro:Iridium disabled.
I'm waiting to hear back from the installer if we can buy $50 boxes that go on our hotel TVs to convert the Pro:Iridium signal so we don't have to buy 60 new TVs off the bat. Does anyone know if DISH sells this? Someone said you can't buy the DirecTV boxes, so wondering if that's the same with DISH.
I've researched DirecTV's com2000 and have a thread on here about it recently. I had a DirecTV installer come out and he recommended buying 40 HD modulators and 40 HD receivers instead of the com2000. Still waiting on a quote from him.
I prefer the DISH system if I can avoid buying 60x $500 TVs but even then we may still do it. I'm told the initial purchase of equipment will be around $20-25K for the two Smartboxes, splitters, amplifiers, etc. It appears we'll save over $1,500 a month with DISH over DirecTV if we switch, so the ROI will be pretty quick and we'll have a much superior system.
Wondering if anyone has had issues with their Smartbox. The tech said there's an issue where a few channels will drop out on a card every once in a while and the card needs to be reset. But he said DISH is working on a firmware upgrade to fix it. He said it was a buggy at first but a lot of firmware updates in the last year have made it great and he has installed it in a lot of hotels and hospitals. I did go check out a new small 50 bed surgery center he installed a Smartbox at and I was impressed.
I was told to be legit, I need two Smartboxes. One Smartbox serving the hotel rooms with Pro:Iridium enabled. A second Smartbox one serving the casino floors, Pro:Iridium disabled.
I'm waiting to hear back from the installer if we can buy $50 boxes that go on our hotel TVs to convert the Pro:Iridium signal so we don't have to buy 60 new TVs off the bat. Does anyone know if DISH sells this? Someone said you can't buy the DirecTV boxes, so wondering if that's the same with DISH.
I've researched DirecTV's com2000 and have a thread on here about it recently. I had a DirecTV installer come out and he recommended buying 40 HD modulators and 40 HD receivers instead of the com2000. Still waiting on a quote from him.
I prefer the DISH system if I can avoid buying 60x $500 TVs but even then we may still do it. I'm told the initial purchase of equipment will be around $20-25K for the two Smartboxes, splitters, amplifiers, etc. It appears we'll save over $1,500 a month with DISH over DirecTV if we switch, so the ROI will be pretty quick and we'll have a much superior system.
Wondering if anyone has had issues with their Smartbox. The tech said there's an issue where a few channels will drop out on a card every once in a while and the card needs to be reset. But he said DISH is working on a firmware upgrade to fix it. He said it was a buggy at first but a lot of firmware updates in the last year have made it great and he has installed it in a lot of hotels and hospitals. I did go check out a new small 50 bed surgery center he installed a Smartbox at and I was impressed.