Well folks...
I didn't get my Smartcard needed to test the Eastern Arc service. But I did get the Dish up and running!
Setting up this Dish was a snap, it took me around 15 minutes to put it together and another 15 to mount the dish and get it locked down with some solid signals.
Mounting the Dish was a snap. In my area the elevation was 42 degrees, and the scew was 90 degrees, I didn't even need to screw with the scew.
Once I had the mount attached to the house (the longest part of the Dish install) I stuck the dish on the mount connected a coax to my SuperBuddy meter and turned the dish until I had signal. Once I got the strongest signal by moving it to the right and left, I now used the up and down adjustments until I got the highest signal I could. After that I locked everything down and ran a coax cable to my sons room (it is the closest room to the dish, and I didn't want to dismantle my Dish 500 and 61.5 setup I currently use since none of the TV's in the house would be able to watch TV until I got the new smartcards)
Once I had the cable run I connected it to his 622 receiver using a DPP Seperator. Up next I ran the check switch.. this took a LONG LONG time to get from step 1 of 4 to step 2 of 4. As it was on step 4 of 4 a message popped up on the screen saying my receiver was going to turn off due to inactivity, so I pressed cancel on that message, which also canceled the check switch... so I had to run it again.
After 20 minutes went by the check switch was done and it alerted me I was looking at less satellites then I was looking at before (which was true) and asked me if I wanted to save, I said yes.
After this it went to the aquiring satellite signal screen, it started on 61.5 then went to 110 (umm I don't have 110 hooked up) then after a few minutes went back to 61.5 again. After that is did its start up of 1 - 5 on the 61.5 satellite, after that was done it asked me if I wanted to download the guide, it said it would take 5 minutes so I let it run... after 20 minutes I hit the cancel button. (The green download bar was just a few hairs from the end but it sat there for a long long time)
After that.. boom I was watching television from the Eastern Arc.
Surprisingly the first channel to come up was Channel 101 (The Dish Network Neighborhood channel) I hit the info button on my remote twice and saw that I was watching it from the 72 degree slot. This was my first view of SD MPEG4 of Dish Network.
The PQ was ok, but hard to judge since I knew the recording was coming off a hard drive at the uplink center. As I looked I could see compression blocks in some of the solid backrounds and even sometimes on the faces. But again I believe that this was pre compressed for MPEG2, so the PQ on this channel is not one I would guage anything from.
In a quick flip through the channels all of the channels coming off of the 72 degree satellite were black as I need a new Generation 3 smart card to view them surprisingly there was one HD channel which I could pick up from the 72 degree location and that was HDTheater. The PQ on this channel looked great. In fact its the best I have seen that channel look in a long time.
All of the HD from 61.5 was available to me to watch and I was also able to watch USA-HD from 61.5.
My HD locals were available from 61.5 but I did not see my SD locals listed in the guide.
After testing for awhile, I hoooked my sons 622 back up to the legacy satellite system and ran a check switch again. Once that was done he was back to watching TV.
I was happy that I was able to easily tune into the Eastern Arc satellites. And then I went and watched the closing ceremonies for the Olympics. Overall it was a productive day.
Below is some of the pictures I took, note that the TV pictures I took were taken by me taking a picture of his LCD TV. (yeah I know not the best qualilty) but you get the picture.
