Dishes: Does brand matter?

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bshrode

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Jan 21, 2004
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Ok, so I'm looking to get the Phase III dish and an HD receiever. One question though, is one brand of dish any better than another? I mean, they all look exactly the same, well, except the TERK one, the pictures make it look almost black in color. eBay has some great deals on them, I can walk away with one for like $40 plus shipping. Any suggestions?

-Bryan :confused:
 
The phase 3 dishes are all the same, just know what you are buying so you don't get burned. A used dish may have problems or your shipping and handling charges may out price a local purchase.
 
I beg to differ. The CalAmp lnb KTI and Winegard dishes (both Made in USA; Some still are) are consistently better than the WNC and Terk dishes, that are manufactured in Taiwan and China.

I install and do service calls on both Dish and DirecTV units. The Terk dishes are junk. Just one year old, not along the seacoast, but in the mountains inland, I examined a Terk dish installed by Circuit City not much more than a year ago. They don't galvanize before they paint or apply the powder coat. The inside of the lnb mount tube and the mast had extensive rust inside.

Winegard and CalAmp/KTI galvanizes their components, before finishing. They have a 10 year design life. WNC is the new name for Acer, the company that made some of the worse and cheapest computers. CalAmp "gardiner" lnb's are made in USA.

There is a difference. Dish Network controls the quality of their dishes. They first used KTI; then Channel Master and now Winegard. I've seen 6 year old DirecTV and Winegard Dish Network Dishes, with very little rust on them. Channel Master really got cheap in the past three years. Dish Network dumped them from the Dish 500. All Dish 500's for the past 18 months have been Winegards. Channel Master went bankrupt and has been bought out by Andrew. They had thousands of bad DishPro twins that they had to pay Dish to service and take back. They were going to make the SuperDish, which is now in short supply.

So, basically, stay away from Terk or WNC. I think RCA has gone to them, too.
 
Mike, your post has just saved my HOURS of research. You obviously have a lot of practical experience in this area. I'm wondering if you could expand your post?

LNB quality?
LNB branding and OEM?
Channel Master Gain Master dish quality?
Best Buy sells RCA and FUNAI (Chinese knockoff ???)

Any other tidbits to share?

Thanks,
Tom J
 
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