Question on Dish / Satellite/ Direct TV.

Posted by irfanballard on April 3, 2009, 2:42 pm

Question on Dish / Satellite/ Direct TV.

I hear a lot about Dish and satellite TV being less expensive than
Cable - Comcast.

I have questions on Dish / Satellite/ Direct TV...I am assuming all of
these install a dish of some kind outside the house.

In terms of installation, wiring, roof etc- what are the negatives of
this service.
Do they have wires all over the roof / house ? or is is transparent
and seemless ?
Does it make the place ugly ?

I am wondering what are the installation negatives with the above ?
Any other issues ?

Please let me know as I am totally uninformed with this service. We
live in the SF Bay Area, CA.

Thank you,

Irfan Ballard

Posted by metspitzer on April 3, 2009, 4:10 pm

On Fri, 3 Apr 2009 11:42:37 -0700 (PDT), irfanballard@gmail.com wrote:

The biggest thing that keeps me from swapping is they don't ground the
dish according to the National Electrical Code.

The NEC says the dish has to be grounded. It doesn't say it has to be
grounded by the installer.

Anyone thinking of switching should insist they ground it per NEC 810

Posted by bob haller on April 3, 2009, 5:29 pm

The installs by dish network service is done to NEC specs. The audit
the installers by inspecting after install and make the installers go
back and make it right.

most important is coax grounded where it enters the building.

dish works great we have haqd it for perhapsa 12 to 14 years.

Posted by hchickpea on April 3, 2009, 9:53 pm

On Fri, 3 Apr 2009 11:42:37 -0700 (PDT), irfanballard@gmail.com wrote:

We've had Direct-tv for about ten years in three locations.  Every
installer grounded the dish properly to the common ground point.  The
biggest issue, IME, is rain fade when there is a strong storm.  Since
we get tornadoes here, and they are preceded by big storms, that is
not a good thing when watching a local channel for weather info.

If you have high-speed internet through your cable, you lose it with
satellite tv.

Posted by bob haller on April 4, 2009, 8:33 am

On Apr 3, 9:53ï¿½pm, hchick...@hotmail.com wrote:

friends use satellite outage as warning of major storm coming.

rainfade if far less common than cable is out, car hit pole, etc etc.

rainfade only occurs in storms that if you were driving you would pull
off......

so its not a big issue.

We LOVE the DVR digital video recorder.

it records the shows and we watch them when we want.

a hour of primetime is over 15 minutes of commercials:(

dish has the edge there easy to skip thru commercials