We got the Hughes directv satellite dish and receiver because I got sick and tired of our cable company (Mediacom) always jacking up the price and giving us stupid channels that I don't think anyone would watch. I went to the yellow pages in our local telephone book and found a directv dealer from up in Michigan. They had a special going that the satellite and receiver was free along with free installation. All I had to pay was $15.00 for shipping. It did take a little doing to get someone here to install it because the people that did there installations were fired because of there lack of promptness in get to peoples houses to install. They did send someone all the way down here to install it and we live south of Ft.Wayne IN. That came to about a 300 mile round trip for the installer. Well back to the satellite and receiver, if you don't know what you are doing I think it would be a little difficult to install yourself. I am sure if you were to read the directions before you start you could do it though. The main thing is to get the satellite pointed in the right direction. All you do for that is turn on the tv and set it to a certain channel and move the satellite until you hear the beeps get faster from the tv. I watch the installer do it and it looked easy. The remote for the system has every thing you need to control the tv, vcr, satellite, and one auxiliary item. We use our stereo for the auxiliary so we can have stereo sound. The remote also has a menu button so you can see what is on every channel and a brief description of what the show or movie is about. The remote has many more functions that I haven't yet figure out or tried to. I know that if you have the receiver connected to a telephone jack you can use the remote to order pay per view movies and other special that they offer.

Now for the bad, which is short. The weather can interfere with the signal and you can lose every channel until the weather clears up a bit. It does take a pretty good storm though. I installed an out door antenna on the house for these times. The antenna is also good so that I can get my local tv channels (ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX). That is the other thing wrong with directv, is they don't carry the Ft. Wayne channels. So I have to have the antenna to get our local news. One last thing, to record programs on the vcr you either have to watch the program at the same time or have the record when you are not watching tv.

Directv is cheaper and get a lot more channels than cable tv. I love it and won't get rid of it until there service goes to pot or cable gets cheaper and gets better programing.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): Free