Jeff Billimek’s Journal

I went to bed sort of late last night so it was tough for me to get up at 7am. I woke up so early because I wanted to clean up some of the crap around my apartment before the install guy comes over.

My DirecTV installation was scheduled for today between 8am and noon. I got most of the junk cleared up by 8:30am. Around 9am I got a telephone call on my landline from the installer. He said that he would be over between 10am and 11am. After I got off the phone with him, he called back a couple of minutes later and said that it would be later - between 11am and noon.

11am came and went. 12pm came and went. By the time 1pm rolled around I got pretty nervous and checked my landline. My piece of crap cordless phone wasn’t working correctly! It’s a little flakey whenever it is off the base unit and will often not get a dial tone or ring at an incoming call. Since that is my only connected phone to the landline, I most likely missed the installer guy calling again! It’s pretty frustrating!

Since I had no way to contact the installer, I called up DirecTV and explained the situation. They gave me the phone number for the installation company. I called them, and they said that they would have the installer call me back shortly. This time I had my piece of junk cordless phone on the charger so it would ring correctly.

When the installer came, I gave him directions and shortly after that he arrived. He was a older balding Indian man who wore a utility belt. When I showed him to the back porch, he pulled out an astrolabe-looking device and peered through it towards the southern sky. This is what it all came down to: Would I be able to get a signal from my porch?

Fortunately his prognosis was good. He then asked if the apartment management allowed drilling into the balcony to mount the dish. I didn’t think so but he said that if he can’t drill that he will have to install some type of mounting pole which will cost $50. This really upset me. I called up the leasing office to check on the drilling rule and they did confirm that there is to be no drilling. They also reminded me that there is a $100 deposit that you must pay when getting a satellite system. I’m sure I’ll get around to paying that some day.

The installation guy also said that he would have to use some special ‘flat’ cables to run underneath the back door and underneath the window. Those are $5 each and I would need three. I started whining about how I wasn’t expecting to have to pay anything for installation and the guy said he would give me a break on the cables so I would only need to pay for the $50 mount. Whatever.

He brought in the boxes for the standalone receiver as well as the Tivo unit. He said that I could hook them up myself if I wanted things to go faster. I was more than happy to hook things up. I first hooked up the standalone receiver to the old television in the bedroom. Instead of running a cable wire from the wall to the television, I ran it from the television to the DirecTV receiver. I also plugged in the receiver and plugged in the phone line.

Next I moved onto the Tivo unit. It’s a 40-gig Samsung S4040R. I unplugged the coax cable line from the television and wall and plugged it into one of the satellite receiver slots on the Tivo. The box had another coax cable which I plugged into the second satellite input on the Tivo. I then ran the S-Video cable from the Tivo directly into my television. I ran the RCA audio cables from the Tivo to my stereo receiver. Lastly I plugged in the phone line and plugged in the power cord. I turned on the television and saw that it was working (audio and video). It was sitting at a setup screen.

By this time, the dish was mounted on my new $50 steel pole and the guy was running the wires down to the door and window. I helped him with the flat wires. I was skeptical at first but they worked out quite well. Once he had those secure, I plugged the coax cables into them and was ready to go.

When he was all done, he was surprised that I made as much progress with the receivers. I then went through the on-screen setup for the Tivo & DirecTV. It was very simple and easy. I was happy to see the satellite signal strength for both receivers on the dish at around 95%.

Next, the installer called up DirecTV and gave them serial numbers and specific info from the boxes the receivers came in. After that, he gave the phone to me and I had to walk through the service activation with the DirecTV rep. I signed up for the ‘Total Choice Plus’ package with local channels. He tried to sell me some kind of warranty but I turned it down. As he did something on their side, he had me switch to a local channel to make sure the signal is coming through. That was fine. He then had me switch to an ‘extended channel’ but there was no signal. Within about 30 seconds the channel came in. I was in business. I also signed up for their three-month free trial of HBO.

When it came time to pay the installation guy for the $50 pole, I asked him who to make the check out to. He showed me his ID badge with an Indian-sounding name. It seems sort of shady to pay the installer directly. I wonder if it is just a scam?

After he left, I spent the rest of the day setting up the system and reading the manual. I wanted to start setting up ’season passes’ but the info in the guide was incomplete. A message at the bottom of the screen said that it will take about two days to download everything.