December 7, 2005 6:34 PM

sparckl said:

I'm thinking about buying a new, upgraded HR10-250 with PTVnet from ptvupgrade.com. I would be a new DirecTV subscriber, so I'd be signing up with them at the same time.

How would the DirecTV sign-up work, since I just want their service and the dish installation, but no receiver hardware? I'm thinking the easiest thing to do would be to sign up for one of their free-receiver offers for new subs, and then just swap out the standard receiver after it's all installed, but would this confuse whatever CSR I'd need to call later to activate the HR10-250?

Thanks,
~CKL

This is probably your best strategy. Also consider some of the deals available through best buy; you can get an R15 (DirecTV DVR - not TiVo, but certainly better than a standard DirecTV receiver) for $99 with a $100 rebate. Not sure what their installation deals are, but they usually have something cometitive going; Circuit City has similar deals, as well.

Once you have an engagement with a local installer, you can pay them additional $$$ to run additional lines (ie you want to have two lines for every DirecTV DVR or TiVo receiver as they have dual tuners) and switches throughout your house.

As for activation, none of this should be a problem. All the CSR needs to know is what type of receiver you are activating and the serial number and access card information. All of this is provided with your receiver; it doesn't matter whether you are starting a new account or just adding a receiver to an existing account.

For answers to commonly asked questions, please refer to the
InstantCake Instructions and Release Notes,
Official InstantCake Discussion Thread, and the
Official PTVnet Discussion Thread