I lucked out, the installer was here when he said he would be, he was an experienced sat installer, though this was his first VOOM install.I had taken down my 24" dish that I had pointed at 61.5 because I wanted to move it to the other side of the house near my Dish 500 where all of my cable runs and antenna are located.
He arrived, took the Voom box out (they only brought one, I ordered 2, 2 receivers were on my order, they will bring the other one out tomorrow). We hooked up the DVI to my 2HD projector and could not get a picture so we tried component, could not get a picture so we tried composite and got a picture. I'd heard there were issues with the 2HD synching up via DVI with certain STB's so we powered down the PJ, left the VOOM box on, powered up the PJ and had a picture.
Then we went outside, ran all the new cabling, installed the dish where I wanted it, hooked up an old Dish 3900 I had laying around collecting dust and tuned in the dish. I verified the signal strength via what he had on his sat meter and we came out with a Dish strength of 106, best I've ever had from 61.5.
He had the Channel Master Stealth antenna but once he saw my big hurking Rat Shack antenna, decided I'd probably be better off using it. So we ran a line from the existing antenna, through a diplexer into the house, he called VOOM, activated the box and we had a picture instantly. BTW, I put the Stealth together, brought it in the house, hooked it up to my Analog TV holding it in the air and had a fabulous picture on all of my Analog channels. I live about 25 miles as the crow flies from the towers, so this antenna would have done a very good job for me outside for digital.
The guy was very knowledgeable, new his sat stuff and was blown away by my PJ picture at 110" diagonal, he had never seen HD so big! Cool.
.Since they didn't send the other receiver, we ran the lines, tested them for a signal and he packed up and left, total time about 1 1/2 hours. I was quite impressed with this guy even though he had never done a VOOM install, he was well enough acquainted with general sat gear to work his way through the setup.
My initial impressions: Watching via DVI I am not impressed. On DiscHD, my picture looked better using my Dish 6000 going through the VGA into the DVI port on the PJ via an adapter cable. I get a lot of jaggies in the picture. I never got this on Dish. The PQ is still stellar, I am not complaining, I just don't think it is as good as the 6000 is. Haven't watched many channels, just checked out the HD real quick and all I can say is: I'm in Heaven!!
I thought all HD channels were DD 5.1? I have not seen any yet and the only audio option I am running is the fiber optic output.
SD channels: I think they are much better than Dish. I have only tested a few of them but I have never seen Dish look this sharp on SD displayed on my PJ. Believe me, at 110" you can easily tell if there is a problem with the picture. At least I am able to watch the SD channels without rubbing my eyes and trying to focus all the time. I also have not yet seen the horrible overcompression artifacts that I always see on Dish.
Guide: It did not display guide info at first. I waited 1/2 hour and all channels showed "No Info" so I called Voom, the guy hit my receiver, had me reset it and I had the guide. I haven't checked recently, but it was only showing current and next show, I was told elsewhere in this forum that it went out 3 days, maybe it takes awhile, I will check it again later.
Time to go play, I love this stuff an after 2 hours of viewing, no lockups or audio glitches.
