Western Arc dish

2011 seems like a very long time ago. Surprisingly, some things haven’t change. I reached back to look at a very early article at The Solid Signal Blog and it is still very accurate. It’s not much to laugh at like some of our older articles, but it still dates back to the time before our blog was relaunched, and when our graphic standards were a little… looser. Back then the blog was hosted using Google’s Blogger platform and while having lots of white space is contemporary, the weak layout and poor type choices didn’t help this article much.

This is the article I’m talking about:

DISH Network’s 1000 Series Satellite Dish Gets New Look

DISH Network is showing their colors with a new design change on the 1000.4 Eastern Arc and Western Arc satellite dishes. It may seem subtle, but considering almost every incarnation of satellite dish has been gloomy grey for the last twenty years, this is a pretty bold move.

The new reflector has a gunmetal black finish, but the other components remain grey. The most recent update in satellite hardware has most DISH Network customers split into two groups, Western Arc and Eastern Arc.

It seems they are slowly moving over the HD locals to the Eastern Arc for some demographics. But even if your locals are now provided on the new satellites, it doesn’t mean this is right dish for you.

The 1000.4 Eastern Arc dish requires you to have receivers with the new G3 Smart Card encryption. So this dish only works with the following receivers:

  • ViP211
  • ViP222
  • ViP622 DVR
  • ViP722 DVR
  • ViP612 DVR
  • ViP922 DVR

If you do qualify for the Eastern Arc but still have legacy receivers, don’t sweat it, the Western Arc models shares all the same hardware. So when its time to make the switch, you can just purchase the LNB and swap them out.

Exciting for sure

Of course, it’s fun to read that article and remember how exciting that was. But, this isn’t how the article was intended to be read. If you want to get a real idea of how The Solid Signal Blog operated back then, you have to look at it the way we looked at it a decade ago. So, I really urge you to go to the Internet Wayback Machine and look at it in its original form… here.

Of course Solid Signal still offers the Western Arc and Eastern Arc dishes, after all it’s only been five years, but if you have a Hopper or Wally system, you’ll probably want to look at using the new Hybrid LNBs instead. They will enable you to use the Hopper 3, Wally, and all the new stuff coming in the future.

About the Author

Stuart Sweet
Stuart Sweet is the editor-in-chief of The Solid Signal Blog and a "master plumber" at Signal Group, LLC. He is the author of over 10,000 articles and longform tutorials including many posted here. Reach him by clicking on "Contact the Editor" at the bottom of this page.