Another successful install!
I ordered VOOM on Friday 3/5 and was given an install date of Saturday 3/13 from 12 to 5 PM. The Installs email came on Monday 3/8. My assigned installer was Southern Satellite & Audio. I called on Wednesday 3/10 to confirm. I spoke to a lady who said everything was set. The dreaded (sorry, you're equipment didn't arrive) phone call never came.
At 2:15 PM on Saturday, Manny from Hi-Tech Satellite (out of Oakland Park, FL) called. He was in Sarasota (an hour south of here) and needed directions. At about 4:30 PM he called and told me he was stuck in traffic on Interstate 275. (He reported to me later that a truck had flipped on its side. Road conditions were bright, sunny and dry. Go figure). At about 5:45 PM I tried calling him a couple of times but got voice mail. He called me about 6:05 PM and was lost. He finally arrived at about 6:25 PM. He was so apologetic about being late. I assured him it was no problem.
I helped him unload and we went to work. After he saw my OTA antenna system, there was no need to bother with the Stealth, so it's still in the box. I have a multi-element all-channel at 30 feet above ground pointed at the antenna farm in Riverview and a UHF corner reflector aimed north. They are mixed together with a Channel Master Join-Tenna. A 10 dB preamp helps overcome the loss of 100 feet of RG-6. Since I already have a single-LNB dish, he offered to replace it with the dual-LNB VOOM dish and feed VOOM and my DiSH 6000. I took down the old dish and assembled the VOOM dish while Manny installed the receiver and ran the cable to the dish. I only need 15 feet of RG-6 between the receivers and the dishes. Manny then connected the dish and aligned it.
After the receiver was activated, he showed me around the menus. He left at about 7:30 PM. He still had 2 calls to go and a trip home to Sanford (near Orlando)! His next install was a 3-room D*. Whew! All I've got to say is why didn't I do this sooner? Very impressive. The HD channels look great and the SD channel quality is as expected. I didn't have time to compare with D* or C-band yet. All mapped OTA channels are working fine. There are a couple of other channels that are not mapped, namely 8.2, 8.3, 22.1. These are WFLA NBC's SD copy of the main channel and weather radar, and WCLF Christian TV. The VOOM remote and my 4DTV C-band receiver remote generate the same codes. I switched my 4DTV receiver to a different remote address to resolve the conflict. This will make it easy to add VOOM to my Pronto.
Satellite signal power is 61 and quality is 33. OTA signal power is 44 and quality is 88. I had one receiver lockup while browsing. No problem. I know a software update is coming soon. I have full confidence in Motorola's software engineers. It took a few updates to squash all the bugs in my 4DTV and they will take care of VOOM's bugs. Writing bug-free software is not easy and can take a while to fully test.
What can I say about Manny? Very professional, helpful, patient and polite. He is terrific at customer service. He is very impressed with VOOM and expects it to be very successful. He says that VOOM installs have picked up since they started the new promotion.
Dana in St. Petersburg, Florida
Happy VOOMer
My equipment: Pioneer Pro-510HD monitor, Denon AVR-5800U A/V receiver, General Instrument DSR-922 4DTV BUD receiver, Sony SAT-HD200 OTA/D* receiver, DiSH 6000U receiver, Motorola DSR-550 VOOM receiver, SatCruiser DSR-101 FTA MPEG2 receiver, Pioneer Elite DVL-91 LD/DVD player, Pioneer Elite DV-38A DVD player, Pioneer Elite DVR-7000 DVD recorder, B&W 7.1 system with Velodyne sub.
