Are DirecTV dishes compatible with Dish Network?

[shmokes]

Is there anything proprietary about the dish itself?  I have an old Dish satellite receiver with an OTA HD tuner in it.  My TV will do 1080i, but it's over five years old and didn't come with a tuner built in.  Tuners are still amazingly expensive, so I want to use this one I have, but it won't work unless it's can see a Dish Network satellite.  I don't have to pay for service, but it has to be able to see the satellite or the box won't work.  Thing is, I don't have a Dish Network dish, but there's a DirecTV dish on the house now.  If it should work, I'll go ahead and get a bunch of cable and run it in, but I don't want to go to the time and expense if it's not going to work, obviously.

[ChadTower]

I don't know about now, especially since the HD content requires a different LNB than the regular content, but back in the day they used to say it was but that it wouldn't get all that strong a signal.  Never tried it to see if it's true.  After all, it's just a metal parabola pointed in the right direction.  The LNB may be the issue.

[shmokes]

That's kind of what I thought.  Thing is, I'll need a good 50-60 feet of coax cable to get there, and the holes through the walls are two small to put cable through with ends on it and I have neither the tool, nor do I even know how, to crimp those ends (forget what those ones are called) onto coax cable.  So it's not close to being worth the expense to run the cable if it won't work.

If I can get any signal at all, it's probably fine, since I don't actually want to watch satellite TV, but the box just needs to be able to see a Dish Network satellite.  It's such a stupid design.  I might end up calling Dish Network and asking them to provide me with a dish, since I paid for this receiver (as opposed to renting one) solely because the Dish rep on the phone explained that it had an OTA tuner in it.  I told him that was irrelevant since I lived in a rural area with no OTA HD signal and he said that I'd be able to use it in the future, regardless of whether I had Dish service.  I knew that I'd be moving to a big city once I graduated college, and I knew that my HD TV didn't have a built-in tuner, so I said sure.  And now it turns out that it was only a half-truth.  I can use it without service, but I can't use it without a satellite signal.  The thing is, we left Dish after our 1-year contract was up and this thing has just been sitting in a closet for like the last three years, so I'm not too optimistic about getting anything out of Dish at this point.

[ChadTower]

...I have neither the tool, nor do I even know how, to crimp those ends (forget what those ones are called) onto coax cable. 

You can get the tool at Radio Shack for a couple bucks and it takes 5 minutes to learn.  F connectors are way easier than rj45.  Take it out into the yard and try it there where you don't have to run 60 feet of cable to test.

[xar256]

Don't know about the Hi def birds...But the 18" round dishes were totally interchangeable on the low-def birds.  I'd say it's worth a shot, But save yourself some effort and test it before pulling the cables  through walls and such.  Go through a window if absolutly needed, you can always run it properly once you know it works.

[ChadTower]

When I have to realign my dish (I do it once every couple of years) I just bring a little TV and a receiver into the yard.  That way all I have to do is look down from the roof to see the signal meter.

[shmokes]

I set up a complex series of mirrors.   

[ChadTower]

And that's just to moon people.  Where is shmokes?  No idea, but there is his ass.

[shmokes]

It's true.  It's very man-with-the-golden-gunnish (I think I've got my James Bonds correct here).  People often get tired of looking at ---my bottom--- and try to throw rocks at me, only to see ---my bottom--- shatter before there eyes.

[ChadTower]

It's call the Shmokes and Mirrors technique.

[SteveJ34]

It's call the Shmokes and Mirrors technique.

I have to chime in.....

That is/was freakin' hilarious!!