Lets say we move into a house and we need 5 TVs hooked up

[CaseLogic]

If I understand it right, Dish will only provide up to 4 rooms worth of equipment, is that right? And lets say all 4 of our TVs are HD, they will allow us to have 4 HD boxes, as opposed to 2 dual tuners (that only provide 1 HD and 1 SD signal)?

Now what about the 5th TV? Can the satellite even handle 5+ TVs? The 5th TV would probably be SD, but I'm not sure how its all hooked up. How much would the little SD nonDVR box cost? They don't let you "rent" them?

We currently have Dish in our apartment, but we're moving into a house that has a Time Warner contract that we're going to ride out until Nov/Dec. Come that time, we're wanting to switch back to Dish but not if its going to be a huge hassle for the 5th and maybe even 6th TVs. Satellite seems to start losing ground to cable with all the extra hassle for extra TVs.

Can anyone provide any experiences, further information, or reassurances on Dish and many TVs?

 

[Pepper]

Potentially more important than number of rooms might be number of persons in the household. If there are only 2 persons in the house, having the ability to watch different stuff on four TVs might be overkill. The outputs from a dish receiver can be sent to many TVs, and with UHF remotes they can be controlled from anywhere in the house. For example, I am running three different rooms from a ViP622 in single mode. No need for all those extra receivers and monthly charges.

Dish will allow you to "rent" enough equipment to get unique channels on four sets, beyond that you have to buy the equipment.

 

[Scherrman]

It's all going to depend on how many TV's you need to have independent from each other. If you want all 6 TV's to be independent, you need 6 tuners. If 4 are HD, you'll need 4 HD tuners. There may be upgrade fees to get more HD receivers. If you get more than 4 tuners then you will have to purchase each extra receiver. Either way, having every TV independent will be costly.

 

[CaseLogic]

by independent I'm assuming you mean they can tune to their own channels and not just mirror.

I'm moving into a house with 4 total people. 1 HDTV in living room (with DVR), 1 HDTV in 3 of our bedrooms [4 total so far], and maybe a final SD TV in the latest roommates bedroom.

Since there's the potential for any of us want to be watching separate things its a reasonable request to want them all on separate tuners. The question is, how much are we going to be looking at paying for an extra receiver or two? Does it require any other extra fees aside from simply paying for the extra receivers? Special satellites, etc?

 

[Pepper]

There's the monthly additional receiver fees for each receiver beyond the first, I think $6 for HD, $5 for SD receivers last time I checked. Each TV you want HD on independent of the others, is one receiver. So you're looking at about $23 monthly, in addition to the base programming cost, and the one-time cost of probably one SD and two HD receivers. Five receivers from a single dish antenna farm would require an extra switch or two as well but if you're getting it all installed by dish at the same time, they'll might eat that cost.

 

[harshness]

You'll need the standard stuff with a couple of switches as far as the dish goes.

I'm thinkin you might weasel a ViP622 or ViP722 and a ViP211 for no extra money up front.
You'll likely need to purchase two HD receivers outright and expected to use TV2 of the HD DVR for the SDTV.

 

[harshness]

There's the monthly additional receiver fees for each receiver beyond the first, I think $6 for HD, $5 for SD receivers last time I checked.

The monthly fee on any HD device over and above the first is $7.

 

[Pen15head]

oh, he is in an alabama market that may be EA. if this is the case he would have to purchase a 211 rec for the 5th room, and an additional switch as he would only get a dpp44 probably with a leased install calling for 4 recs since he wants hd on 4 tv's.

 

[ndcart]

If you think Dish is bad, you should check out the "other" satellite provider. We currently have Dish and moved into a new house. I was trying to outfit the entire house, 4 rooms with HD, but that didn't happen. Since I have a 722, that counts a 2 receivers, so I can only add 2 more. They won't let you trade in the 722 either. Now, with that being said, I quoted all HD with 2 DVRs from D* and the hardware charges came to around $500. At least Dish is going to offer me an additional HD DVR and one HD receiver for only $100. Much better deal. Dish did tell me anything beyond 4 receivers would have to be purchased. Hope that helps.