Our Continuing TV Adventures

We became unhappy paying for Suddenlink. High prices compared to what channels we got. The wife noticed Dish Network, which we'd been with before Suddenlink, had some teaser deal of something like $39.00 a month for a two year contract. Hadn't we done this before? I think we had and quit Dish when they kept raising their monthly rate. But, she seemed interested in trying it again so...here we go.

I set up installation using the Dish Network web site. They told us the guy would be out Saturday between noon and 4pm to hook us up. I made sure to tell them we still had our old satellite dish up on the side of the house. I figured that might help speed things along unless that dish was considered obsolete.

We were notified Saturday, both by phone call and e-mail, the technician would be later than planned. They mentioned in the e-mail you could see what the installer looked like by going to their web site where there was a picture of him. I tried it and it worked. Good idea when there's so many people going around posing as service reps just to get into your house.

He showed up and said our existing dish should be fine but he had to see how well we received the signal with it. It worked fine which saved him some work and us some time.

I was surprised at how small their translator box was. That's what turns the satellite signal into a TV picture. Less than half the size our old Suddenlink box. They call that their "Wally" unit and have one that's even smaller but we didn't sign up for that.

He got us connected pretty quick but then it seem to take forever for the Wally, the remote and the satellite to connect with each other. Probably a half hour as we watched the whole thing take place on the TV screen. Interesting at first, but boring after not too long.

He finally finished up and left after giving the wife instructions on the remote control which I suggested as she usually does the channel controls. That thing makes me nervous, anyway, as the last time I managed to lose our satellite signal the day after installation by changing the TV channel and thus losing the input source. The tech guy didn't seem concerned and gave instructions on how to get out of any bad moves with the remote. I'm still uneasy about it.

It worked fine for the most part with only one problem, although it wasn't a big one: Their TV Guide that shows up on the screen is harder to read for me and it was hard for us to tell just what channels we had available. At last look last night it seemed as if we weren't getting MeTV, which in most circumstances would be a deal breaker, but in this case we do get TVLand which is another oldie network. That might be an acceptable trade off.

Now we'll see how long we can handle Dish Network, for the second time, before getting pissed off and quitting it...again, but seems ok so far.