Dish to pc, more channels?

[overloaded_ide]

I don't mess with dishes so how do they work?

Is it the dish that pics up a certian station or the box at the tv that decides what channel your watching?

I mean an antenna picks up everything your gonna be able to get, then the tv decides what channel to actually show. So if the dish is acting like an antenna and picking up everything, then it must be the box that decides what to show right. So can I use my Pc as the box and bypass the box? Also if using 2 or 3 pc's could each one get it's own channel?

Not wanting to do anything like steal the service or HBO, just simplify connection to the PC and get rid of uneeded junk?

Also could I watch more than one channel that way? Be tuned into channel 3 on one system and 8 on the other? Cable does this, so does an antenna, so what about a dish?

Thinking about getting one maybe around fall, but haven't decided yet.
One channel at a time for the price they charge won't cut it though! And no other service like cable is limited like that, just dish, if it is?

Thanks

[Exothermic]

on the dishes more TV's / VCR's on different channels require more boxes.
Old Analog Cable can be split to multiple TV's, but the new Digital Cable systems require multiple boxes just like the dish setups. What is worse, the crappy cable company (around here anyway) still doesn't do stereo on channels like USA, Sci-Fi, and TBS, where on the digital Dishes they are in stereo. Recently the direct-TV and Dish network people around here have been offering to setup up to 4 receivers, some even offer the integrated PVR in the deal.

Over all quality and listening pleasure I would go with one of the Dishes. If you are in a broadband chalenged area, You may even want to look into their internet offering. But it is only better than dial-up, for non-web browsing protocols their internet is in some cases slower than dial-up. They use special web site proxy systems to stream web site content to make them appear to load faster, but all other protocols suffer from the 1/2 second round trip time the data takes to go from your PC to the satelite, their uplink host, and back.

Exo

[TBoneit]

The Box used here in the USA are more than just tuners, they also hold an access card the holds the info for what channels you sub, Decoding info etc.

In other words the sat data stream is encrypted. I just subscribe for myself.

If you are in the USA Dish network is better for being able to order (for example) only Premium channels, IE HBO (8) or Cinemax (5) or Showtime (10?) Starz encore, or Porn, Or just locals. or any combo of packages.

In other words not like cable where you need to subscribe to basic, extended basic etc before getting premiums.

And their are Yahoo groups for the extraction of the unencrypted Data off of the Hard disks of two dish model PVRs. The fact that it isn't encrypted seems to bypass the DMCA being applicable.

In other words I couldn't watch TV without my PVRs, Dishnetwork & Tivo so I can skip commercials and am not tied to the broadcasters schedule. Not to mention being able to use the 30second skip fwd button to jump past commercials.

[spiderman2k1]

If you get a dish look into Dishnetwork and DirectTV there will be some channels that are not on the other dish so look into them first before you smack down your money