Separate Dish for 77 Satellite? (HD Locals)

[jrparrish]

I have a 1000.2 Dish Network Dish and in order to receive my locals in HD, i needed to have a 1000.4 dish installed. Instead of swapping the dish, the guy put a separate Dish 500 to receive the 77 Satellite. I called to inquire about why a 1000.4 wasn't installed and was told it couldn't pick up the signal or something. The woman told me the installer made a 'service call' and stated he needed to put up a separate dish.

ABC HD seems to have interference (every 10 minutes or so it will distort) and the signal strength is about 50.

Is this separate dish installation a frequent practice? If the reason the 1000.4 wouldn't pick up the 77 satellite, why not move the dish to where it could?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[CowboyDren]

Not a common practice, but acceptable, as the 1000.2 and 1000.4 dishes are designed to accept input for a wing dish. Is there another place on the property that can see all of the satellites, or even a better site for your 77 wing dish?

 

[bross]

It's a common practice to install wing dishes for additional satellites and usually you get better signals that way because the dish is peaked on the single satellite. I don't know why the installer decided to add a separate dish, but it is an accepted practice and should work fine. If you're not happy with the signal quality call Dish and have them check it. If you don't want two dishes call and tell them that.

 

[jrparrish]

Well we live out in the country. The dish we have now is partly under a tree, but the guy used his meter and said there was no distortion (I was told this on a previous service call)...Besides the tree, the dish points towards a flat field. So I'm thinking the guy may have been lazy and just told me that.

Anyway, the guy put the separate dish a few feet from the 1000.2 on a pole. I am just confused that he put the separate dish for the 77 satellite in a different spot and chose not to put the 1000.4 in a position where the 77 satellite could be retrieved.

 

[CowboyDren]

I agree with you. If he went to the trouble to pole mount a wing dish, he should have gone to the trouble to pole mount a 1000.4. That, or he didn't have a .4 on-hand.

 

[whatchel1]

Maybe he didn't have a 1000.4 in stock or with him.

 

[Derwin0]

Do you have any non-HD receivers?

If so, then you'd need the 1000.2 for those.

 

[jrparrish]

Yeah he had a 1000.4 on his truck. When I called dish, I specifically asked for a 1000.4. But yes, I have 3 HD receivers and one non-hd receiver. I sure did not know that you couldn't use a 1000.4 dish for non-hd receivers!

 

[thedamaja]

Everything on Eastern Arc (1000.4 dish) is MPEG4. Only the Dish HD receivers can decode both MPEG4 and MPEG2. SD recievers only decode MPEG2, which is all SD programming on Western ARC (1000.2)