Yeah a dish 500 will work, even with multi feeds. In my test run with the dish 500 I left it on for a week. Had various weather conditions such as high wind (50 mph gusts) light rain, and fairly heavy overcast. It never lost signal though the signal quality was in the low 40s. Using a turbohd dish the quality numbers jumped quite a bit, low 60s. The oval hugesnet dish is in the upper 60s. In all my tests I made my own brackets from steel stock, and used metal conduit hangars as my lnbf holder. the best i ever managed was about a 5 degree spacing on multi feeds on any of the dishes, though curiously the larger dishes could almost go to 4 degree spacing as i was picking up things from 2 satellites. The main reason I made my own brackets was it was cheap, i had the materials laying around and second it was way easier to do a multi feed. I cant find the thread i posted the pictures of my stuff in but making sure you match the angle of the factory lnbf, and the distance from the dish are very important. I can whip one of these out in about 20 to 30 minutes.
In all testing I was able to receive all available fta signals on 103w, 97w, and 91w with all dishes doing multi feeds. None of the dishes I tested would receive either PBS mux but did pick up Montana PBS after the power boost. I have tried a few other satellites and received some content but to me the best bang for my buck was as a minimum 103w and 97w. I even installed the modified hughesnet dish on my house doing the 103w/97w it worked so well. Still lose signal in severe heavy rain but even my 1m dish loses signal. My final conclusion on these tests verify that if modified correctly re-purposed dish network dishes (the only example of a directv dish i had was damaged and useless) work, and work well in most weather conditions. I doubt that id use one for a motorized setup (though I may see if i can build a low buck motor this winter just because it would be fun). However I believe these would only be good for stationary use on certain satellites.
I personally use a linkbox 9000I local on my stationary setup because I like the integration of the terrestrial signals with the satellite signals I receive, and I discorvered it is the only receiver that i have that utilizes modern usb powered external Hard drives. Also will play video content you store on the drive if it has the proper codec. I wish the iptv list was better and it had netflix but those arent deal breakers as i use a roku3. There is the option to add user defined iptv but I know next to nothing about xbmc and the few that i have tried to use doesnt do anything. I havent done any testing or read if this unit will alow you to dvr something from a satellite signal and watch something thats coming in off the terrestrial antenna or vice versa but Im sure that information is out there and think its possible since they are 2 separate tuners. Overall it is the best receiver I own, and I would recommend it to anyone. Doesnt mean I dont long for something better but its my personal favorite receiver right now.
