5. INSALL YOUR EQUIPMENT

You're signed up for the service and you have the equipment. You're so close you can taste it… but there is one final matter that requires your attention: buying chips and dip. Well, that and installing the dish. There's basically two ways to go about this:

The easy way
The hard way

The easy way

Suck up your manhood/womanhood and fork over some cash for professional installation. It will save you lots of time and will ensure that it's done correctly. While it usually costs around $200, there are always ongoing promotions. And if you take advantage of the DISH NETWORK promotion discussed in step 4, it's free! But if you happen to be mechanically inclined, read on and see if you're up for installing the dish yourself.

The hard way

If you're ready for the challenge, then watch a few reruns of Home Improvement and install your satellite system yourself, either with or without the aid of an installation kit. An installation kit, sold in almost all stores that you'd buy your dish in, is highly recommended. It comes with all the necessary hardware and a book/video to guide you. The only thing you'll need besides the satellite equipment is a working phone jack near the location of the receiver. Once that's taken care of, here's what you'll need to be able to do if you decide to go solo:

  1. Mount the actual dish somewhere outside. It's not necessary to mount the dish on the roof (though you may choose to do so); you can install it anywhere it has an unobstructed view of the direction of the orbiting satellite. We suggest installing it on the ground. One tip we'll mention is to place the dish in an inconspicuous place, because if it's stolen, well… how should we put it…TV go bye-bye. Another good idea is to try to position the dish so that it has some sort of a covering (but not so much that it obstructs the signal). The reason for this is that heavy rain and winds may scramble the reception. Don't worry too much, every little drizzle won't break your streak of consecutive hours remaining motionless, but it's something to consider.

  2. Connect the dish to the receiver. This basically involves grounding the wire and then running it from the outside to the inside. If you know something about electronics, this shouldn't be difficult, but if you've managed to somehow screw up plugging a cord into the outlet, you may have some trouble. Luckily, when you buy the installation kit, you'll get lots of detailed information about this process.

  3. Point your dish. This is a very most important part: you need to point the dish at the correct satellite location in order to receive the signal. To do this, you'll need to determine the correct azimuth and elevation (that is, rotation and lift). It's not quite as hard as it sounds, and each provider's website has a feature that gives you the correct azimuth and elevation numbers just by typing in your zip code. The websites also have information on how to apply these numbers to the actual dish. So one last time (we promise), we suggest you go to DIRECTV or DISH NETWORK and click on the "dish pointer" section.

After you've accomplished these three steps, you're ready to install yourself on the couch and make up for lots of lost TV-watching time. Again, to cover our own butts, we recommend that you take the easy way out and just have it professionally installed.

While it's not for everyone, satellite television does offer you an enormous selection of programming at a reasonable price. Now that you know how to get it, there's no stopping you. If you could only wedge yourself out of that "ass-groove" on your couch…