From: bengt@fires1.uucp (Bengt A. Palsson)
Subject: Story of a purchase (long)
Organization: Svenska Popfabriken AB, USA div.
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 19:08:43 GMT


Here's a summary (although somewhat long-winded) about purchasing a sat system.



                                      The story thus far
                                      ==================

Well, I got the system installed in the beginning of July during a two day period
and so far it fulfills all of my expectations and then some.

Dealers:
========
     I talked to the two largest local dealers, ignoring the people who just sell
     out of their garages for the sake of support, should anything go wrong down
     the road.

     The first guy shows up (wearing a heavy gold bracelet and gold watch) and
     takes a look in the back yard and scopes out a spot for the dish and checks
     for T.I.. We then move inside (there was a tornado warning in effect !) and
     he starts approaching the sale by explaining how much programming is
     available and then shows me the line of GI IRDs. After that he quotes me
     some ridiculously high prices for a system (close to $ 4000.00) including
     "one year of free programming". Now, as soon as a salesman says that
     something is free, a warning bell goes off in my mind. So I start
     approaching it from the technical side of things (having read
     rec.video.satellite and lots of publications religiously) asking what type
     of dish, LNBs etc are included in this price. Turns out that what he quoted
     me was a C-band only with a 35 degree LNB (he doesn't know what brand it is)
     and a Unimesh dish ("you really don't need anything better" he says). We
     talk about the Toshiba, Drake and the Monterey line of IRD's and he
     basically has something bad to say about all of them, except for the Toshiba
     2200 (which I already had my eyes on) which has "the best video quality" of
     them all. He finally quotes me a price around $ 3600.00 for an installed
     package including the Toshiba 2200 and a 30 degree LNB. So I say I want to
     think about it and the guy tries very hard to convince me to purchase the
     system right then and there. On the phone before he came out he had already
     asked me if I knew the price range a sat system would be in, how I planned
     to pay for it and if I "would have any problems getting financed". He even
     uses the old car salesman's line of "What would it take for you to make a
     purchase right now ?" Reluctantly he leaves and pursues me with lots of
     phone calls the next few days, gradually dropping the price to about $
     3000.00 + tax C-band only, installed.

     This tells me I can do better elsewhere !!


     Second sat dealer shows up. He comes recommended by a friend who had a
     system installed where he has lots of TI from a microwave tower and these
     guys came out and moved the dish once and replaced the IRD (put in a Monte
     30 which supposedly has really good TI filters) for free (well, included in
     the price). I guess they should have done a better site survey, but al least
     they remedied the problem. These guys also do lot's of commercial
     installations.
     
     We basically went through the same gyrations, the guy is a sales person and
     isn't very technical but answers questions where he can and writes down my
     other questions and did return with answers the next day. He doesn't do a
     site check since I point out that the other guy already has done it. He
     claims that they have had 5 Drake IRDs fail within the last six months and
     wouldn't recommend them. These guys specialize in Toshiba and thus pushes
     it quite a bit. He shows me an article from Consumer reports where the
     Toshibas are rated highest among polled readers. He says with reference to
     Drake: "I really would like to buy American, but there just isn't anything
     reliable enough out there". We settle on the Toshiba 2200, a Winegard
     Quadstar dish, a 30 degree Cal Amp LNB for a package price of $ 2600.00 +
     tax installed (no programming except a "free" month of various channels).
     It turns out that this price also was for a C-band system only and we haggle
     back and forth over the phone for the next few days (I hit him with mail-
     order prices and he came very close) and finally agree on a price of $
     3000.00 installed, including tax. I had figured the same equipment package
     on mail-order would have cost me around $ 2500.00 (SkyVision).

The equipment package I finally settled on includes:

*    10 foot Winegard Quadstar Dish
*    Toshiba 2200 IRD
*    Chapparal Corotor II+ feedhorn
*    California Amplifier C-band LNB (25 degree)
*    California Amplifier Ku-band LNB (0.7 dB)
*    Von Weise actuator, Arm ?
*    12 foot 3.5" pole
*    One month of "free" programming (no movie channels)
*    $ 99.00 worth of coupons for PPV (by virtue of having an IRD with a
     VideoPAL, i.e. not supplied by the dealer)
*    One year "free" subscription to a sat rag of my choice
*    Double the manufacturers warranty on all components (the dealer warrants it)
*    A 30 day warranty period where the dealer will swap any component in the
     system if you aren't happy with it (IRD, LNBs actuator etc.). (At an
     additional cost if the new gear is more expensive than the old gear of
     course).

On a Thursday nite they (three guys) came out, did another site check and ended
up moving the proposed spot (from the first dealer) to clear a few trees. Dug a
hole and set the pole (a 12 ft 3.5 in. diameter pipe) in ready-mix concrete.
Fairly easy to do, I could have done that myself including the all-important
making sure that the pole is plumb. They just used a small level with a magnet
on one side, stuck it to the top of the pole and wiggled the pole around while
moving the level around the outer diameter of the pipe.

Friday they returned and put the dish and the electronics together. All of which
I could have done as well. The only problem may have been hoisting the dish up
on the pole once it was assembled. Pulling the cable through the house was also
fairly painless as was tying in to the phone line for the VideoPAL.

The tricky part seems to be aligning the dish. These guys took about an hour to
get the first satellite in, using two-way radios (that routinely picked up my
neighbors cordless telephone !) and I'm not sure what adjustments they did to the
dish at that time (I was inside), something about the azimuth angle. I think here
is the only time where it pays to have someone experienced around. Although it
could be done with one of those instructional video tapes and a few friends I
guess.

Then came setting up the videoPAL which involved calling an 800 number and
reporting the unit ID and my name and address and soc. sec. number.

They finished the job nicely by tie-wrapping the cable to the pole, burying the
cable, replacing all grass that had been removed and painting the pole in the
same color as the dish. The owner of the operation came out and inspected the
final result and gave me an in-depth tour of the IRD, programming, sat rags etc.

I got a one month free programming deal (no movie channels) with the purchase and
that also had to be called in to the supplier of the programming. The
authorization was pretty much instantaneous. It's cool, you can call up a screen
and watch some of the data stream in hex coming in and you can see when the
programming center authorizes your IRD and VideoPAL.

The Toshiba IRD:
================
     The Toshiba performs beautifully and is user friendly enough for me. 

     A nice thing is the UHF remote which allows me to operate it from any other
     room that has a TV (using the VHF output on the back of the Toshiba).

     It has a Y/C output (the value of this has been discussed elsewhere), it at
     least gives you another video output to route somewhere else.

     The video output is excellent (one of the installers said it "screams") on
     both C-band and Ku-band, I think I need a new TV that can handle it a little
     bit better than my 7 year old NEC monitor. I've noticed a lot of sparklies
     in color saturated areas though so maybe it's too "hot" for the IRD or the
     TV (also discussed elsewhere).

     I set the timer on it this morning (the user interface could use some work
     here) to record the Swedish News off SCOLA (I'm originally from Sweden).
     We'll see if it works. (It did work just fine !) 

     After you select a new satellite, it takes about 3-5 seconds before the
     relays in the IRD kick in and starts moving the dish (something that the
     first dealer pointed out as being something negative). I can wait !

     There is a "hidden" feature of the VCII+ setup where if you hit setup on the
     remote and then 0 (zero) instead of the choices given, a diagnostic screen
     appears with eight entries displaying various hexadecimal numbers, some of
     which is changing apparently as data is received from the VCII+ stream. I
     have no idea what these numbers mean except the first one which is obviously
     the unit ID number.

     The front panel display of a moving dish (as the real dish moves) is
     somewhat of a novelty. Good for learning approximately where different sats
     are located (east or west).

Programming:
     Basically, if you want it, it's out there (except hardcore pornography) ! 
     PPV seems to be very common, a lot of the smaller sports networks are
     carried as PPV, that is you can buy just one show at the time from a sports
     channel. Some of these give you a few minutes of free preview time before
     they go scrambled. Some PPV is a rip-off, $ 2.50 for a half hour of bloopers
     from the 70's (I only watched the preview), so beware !
     Two music channels from Canada is a lot better than the hyped-up MTV. One
     is in French only which is interesting. Saw some interesting feeds from
     Wimbledon, there seemed to be three separate NBC feeds from the UK to USA,
     of which only one was broadcast over the air. Taped an upcoming pledge
     special from one of the PBS feeds which was The Best Of "Are you being
     served" a hilarious british comedy series on PBS.
     Unedited news feeds are also hilarious to watch sometime.

     I eventually ended up buying the HBO "valupack" directly from HBO at $
     275.00 /year and the Playboy channel at $ 99.00/ year directly from Playboy.
     The programming was turned on while I was on the phone. The sales reps were
     not hyped and didn't try to sell me anything extra. The Playboy woman did
     want to ask me some "questions for our marketing department" but I declined
     :-)  All this will give me more than enough to watch !!! 

     The dealer I bought the system from hyped the fact that they offered
     programming "at cost" which sounds cheap but in reality (after a few probing
     questions and a lot of different answers) they charge the same as HBO,
     they'll just order it for you ! In fact if you wanted to order with a credit
     card, they would charge you extra for that whereas HBO just bills you.

Moral:
======
Read rec.video.satellite
Shop around for dealers
Don't let them pressure you
Question the statements (to the best of your ability) that they make regarding
quality and price
Know your mail-order prices and don't hesitate to use them as a negotiating tool.

Good luck !


-- 
Bengt A. Palsson                         | "TV is chewing gum for the eyes"
FORD Scientific Research Labs            | - Frank Lloyd Wright 
Internet   : bpalsson@smail.srl.ford.com |  
Compuserve : 70541,3431                  | 
Newsgroups: rec.video.satellite