Tell us which country you are in and then we'll be able to give you more
accurate advice.

For instance, in Australia the major cities have cable with cheap decoders
while most of the rest has satellite with VERY expensive dish, low noise amp
and tuner/decoders.  The cable companies ALWAYS own the equipment and loan
it to the users at a nominal rental (not the real cost of the equipment, but
at what they hope will be more than the cost over the life of the
installation).
Naturally adding another decoder to cable is cheap for the provider, but
adding another tuner/decoder to the satellite system is expensive, so what
they do here is split the difference and charge the average extra amount to
both types of service.

The low noise amps provide a signal strong enough to daisy-chain through at
least 3 tuner/decoders, so it is technically possible to have 2 in your
installation.  The digital satellite standard we use also allows the one
decoder to receive several bouquets from the same or different companies,
BUT as they only fit one card reader per machine and they WON'T allow
multiple services on the one card yet, we are forced to use multiple
tuner/decoders daisy-chained to receive more than one company's pictures.

(Don't ask about data casting, out government is too afraid to think about
it let alone make a decision on introducing it).

Bye.

        -----Original Message-----
        From:   John Pearson [SMTP:xero@CMC.NET]
        Sent:   Sunday, 5 March 2000 11:32
        To:     PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
        Subject:        [OT] Satalite dish questions

        I want to subscribe to a satalite dish service.

        I want 2 recievers.

        Does the dish service charge extra for a 2 reciever service.

        Any help or sugestions are welcome.

        Thanks

        John