The dish hardware is really bad
Written: May 07 '05
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Pros: I have just the dish and not the whole package. :-)
Cons: Dish has too many fundamental flaws to list.
The Bottom Line: Worst industrial design ever.
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| dgatwood's Full Review: RCA DS4240RE DIRECTV System Dual LNB |
Okay, I don't have this whole system, just the dish hardware portion of it, to go with a refurbished Panasonic receiver. I bought this because it was relatively inexpensive, and hey, RCA generally is pretty good about building quality gear, right? Heh, yeah. Uh huh.
So I get this thing out of the box. It's a dish. 'Nuff said. I've assembled one before (the round variety), so it shouldn't be hard. I start by assembling the LNB arm. The metal arm won't fit into the plastic 3-way LNB holder (which is now combined with the multiswitch -- obnoxious, since that means I can't easily use it with my current dish as a simple 3 unit switch temporarily).
Anyway, turns out the opposite end of the arm does fit, but of course, that's the wrong end. Both ends are supposed to have a deep groove down one edge. The groove wasn't deep at all on one end. Took a hammer, bent the metal, 'nuff said. No prob, so they just didn't quite bend it right at the factory.... Minor annoyance, nothing symptomatic of a larger problem, right?
So then I'm getting ready to put the swivel mechanism on the back of the dish, and to my horror, the stupid thing is bent. The part that shows the degrees of tilt was bent up so far that the washer would fall right through it. No point in putting the nut on yet. Straightened the bent metal, no big deal, but it's something I really shouldn't have had to do as a consumer of high-end video gear.
Next, I put the swivel mechanism on the dish. Now this is really straightforward. You put two stove bolts into the front of the dish, slip the back plate on, get the angle from your receiver, set the angle, screw on two lock nuts... wait a second... lock nuts!?! Anyone who has ever used stove bolts should know immediately what comes next....
Okay, so against my better judgment, I put it together. The lock nuts screw on about half-way, but get tighter and tighter. To make a long story short, the plastic holes in the dish rounded out and the stove bolts spun freely. Bet you didn't see that one coming. So they won't screw down, won't unscrew, and the bolts spin freely in the hole, and the mechanism has an inch of play. It is unusable and it won't fit in the box to ship the piece of junk back because it is now twice as thick....
Problem is, stove bolts don't have a groove on the end. If they're spinning, there's NOTHING you can do about it. I had to go out and buy a hacksaw and spend over an hour sawing the bolts RCA provided off the back of the dish. I replaced them with normal, flat-head screws, lock washers, and normal nuts, like RCA should have shipped with it to begin with. I'll probably cover them with rubber caps to keep the weather out. So why couldn't RCA have done that and saved me this royal nightmare?
But it doesn't stop there. The hole in the LNB arm won't quite line up with the hole in the dish plastic. Had to hit it through with a hammer (following the directions in this regard, by the way -- they actually say that you may have to use a hammer to get bolts through...).
Next, back to the metal tilt assembly. The mounting plate for the fine adjustment attachment was bent outward at about 30 degrees from straight. It's supposed to be straight. I then had to bend that back in order for the arm to even be installable -- the screw portion was actually touching the side of the tilt assembly.
So finally I have this thing together, three hours and $10 worth of replacement parts tools (hacksaw) later. Keep in mind that I assembled their competition's small dish in about five minutes, and that it took just a little over two hours to set up the ENTIRE previous system including running the wires under the house. You should immediately see the discrepancy in quality....
To top it all off, I tried getting the information from a different receiver, and to my horror, the tilt numbers differed by fifteen degrees. Since they point at exactly the same satellites, that tells me that different dishes from different companies have different calibrations. In short, the numbers for the tilt were probably not even right, so if I had followed their directions exactly, I would have been totally screwed
Mixed system owners BEWARE! DO NOT USE THEIR LOCK NUTS IF YOU WANT TO KEEP THIS DISH! GO TO HOME DEPOT OR LOWES OR WAL-MART AND BUY NORMAL NUTS AND LOCK WASHERS! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
And after several hours, I still can't find the bird. I'm starting to wonder if they shipped two defective LNBs.
RCA cut the following corners:
1. Made the tilt setting permanent so you can't move dish to another city by using lock nuts. This caused subsequent failure of stove bolts.
2. Used stove bolts instead of normal bolts with rubber plug covers, saving a couple of cents, but causing serious problems when holes wear out, also making non-movable.
3. Did not reinforce plastic holes for bolts.
4. Designed the holes in such a way that less than 1/16th of an inch of plastic was in contact with the square portion of stove bolts.
5. Did not bend tubes to fit.
6. Shipped bent rear mounting hardware.
7. RCA and other companies did not standardize on tilt numbers....
Hopefully I'll at least get this thing working, but regardless, this has been a really bad experience, and this hardware is just plain junk.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 120 or so
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Epinions.com ID:
dgatwood
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Reviews written: 1
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