Voom Ota Better Than Dish 811

[kcribb1]

I subscribed to Dish after the demise of VOOM. After hooking my 811 receiver up and comparing the strenghts and weaknesses of the Voom receiver, I can honestly say the VOOM receiver pulls in more OTA channels than my 811 receiver. I have a difficult time obtaining my local FOX and NBC broadcast on the 811. I re-connected my VOOM receiver using the same antenna but with much better results. What's the deal with the 811?

 

[lilyarbie]

The Voom reciever is probably better hardware wise.....

The Voom receiver might have better decoding hardware on board compared to the 811 Dish Network receiver. Different set-top boxes for digital OTA ATSC reception have different thresholds of decoding signals dependent on the hardware that is present within the receiver. Some are better at dealing with nasty signal issues that can keep your receiver from picking up a channel at all. Newer chipsets are dealing with issues such as this and are making it much better to decode signals than other chipsets. According to the latest news, the new 5th generation chipset for OTA receivers should be widely available this fall. From my understanding, the US Digital receivers that are sold at Wal-mart for only $199.00 should have the new 5th generation chip in place. I'm not sure if there will be a price increase as a result of this, but I do know that U.S. Digital plans to sell the new receivers with the newer generation chip in place.

 

[grb]

I subscribed to Dish after the demise of VOOM. After hooking my 811 receiver up and comparing the strenghts and weaknesses of the Voom receiver, I can honestly say the VOOM receiver pulls in more OTA channels than my 811 receiver. I have a difficult time obtaining my local FOX and NBC broadcast on the 811. I re-connected my VOOM receiver using the same antenna but with much better results. What's the deal with the 811?

The 811 does not have a built in amplifer for OTA channels. The Voom receiver does. If you get an amplifier (~$35-$40), you should be able to improve your OTA performance.

I still use my Voom receiver for OTA because I knew the 811 had shortcomings in OTA.