Seeking advice from fellow Dish owners (1 Viewer)

[Rod U]

As an owner of a Dish Network 501 decoder box and a Panasonic 47" HDTV, I'd like to know my options for receiving digital TV signals.
I've heard about the Dish Player 6000 which receives both satellite and OTA hi-def signals. Two problems: the $1000 price tag, and the need to install ANOTHER dish on my roof! When can we expect dish network to put the digital hi-def signals on the same satellite as the NTSC stuff?
Are there any hi-def decoder boxes that ONLY receive OTA digital signals? This might result in a cheaper box. Furthermore, if I want to watch a movie, I'll rent a DVD. HBO and Showtime don't impress me.
Am I missing any other options besides converting to DirecTV and choosing from the 5 or 6 available hi-def decoder boxes they offer? And yes, I know DirecTV only requires one dish to get NTSC and hi-def signals, but I'd like to stay with Dish Network.
Thanks!

 

[RyanMM]

Even if you did buy one of the HD/Direct Tv boxes (for price reasons), you do not need to subscribe to Direct TV. You can actually use 6000 w/out being a Dish subsciber too, but you still have to have a Dish pointed at the Satellite.
I don't think Dish is ever (well any time soon any way) going to use the 110/119 Sats for HD programming, so for the time being you have to have a second dish.

 

[Mike I]

While having too dishes is slightly inconvienant, Dish has plenty of bandwidth on the 61.5 sat which will let them add more HD programming as it becomes available...
------------------

 

[Paul W]

I'm asking not, when can they move HD programming over to 110/119º but when they can start moving crap over to the new 65º sat. The two main sats are so overburdened with channels, they have to compress the shit out of them (resulting in terrible compression artifacts on some channels).
I can't wait to see more programming on the 65 sat.
------------------
Link Removed Paul Warren
Hey fella . . . I bet you're still livin' in your parent's cellar . . . downloading pictures of Sarah Michelle Gellar . . . and posting "Me too!" like some brain-dead AOL-er . . . I should do the world a favor and cap ya' like Old Yeller . . . you're just about as useless as MPEGs [sic] to Hellen Keller.

 

[Rod U]

Thanks guys for the info. I spose' I could just buy the best value decoder box I can find, hook it to an antennae on my sat dish, and cancel my $4.99 a month local channel access through dish network. Lessee, a $500 decoder box would then pay for itself in only 8 and 1/3 years!!! Of course, how can you put a price on high quality digital TV? OK, so what brand/model STB do you all suggest? I'd like to keep it around $500. Thanks!