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I pulled the DN dish off my house when I bought it just because I won't have such a thing
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Well I don't have a DN dish either, but I have 3
DTV dishes. One is actually subscribed, but one of them is permanently aimed at one of the DBS sats, from which I can get LOTS of FTA audio channels, although it takes a PCI card for most of them. I also have a DTV lnb strapped onto my big dish so that I can surf for FTA on other sats. I don't mind receiving Dish or DTV or Nimiq, provided it's FTA.
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More and more channels are moving to AC-3 (Digital Dolby) and the Fortec's pass the stream but do not decode it. A surround sound receiver with fiber optic input might be a unit to consider. A bunch of PBS on 87 but most is in AC-3.
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Yeah, I was going to mention that. Anyone who likes PBS is going to want something to decode
AC3. I use a Soundblaster Extigy myself. Another option, right now at least, is to pick up the PBS stuff with a DCII receiver, like a DSR-4200. If you got a
C-band system, a 4DTV of some kind might be recommended, but with just Ku, I think a 4200 off Ebay would be the best bet. The DCII channels don't require an AC3 decoder. However the status of PBS is questionable. The only thing they seem to want to insure will remain up there is the C-band analog signal. But if you have both C-band and Ku and both analog, FTA, and DCII, there is a LOT of PBS up there.... at least now. 90% of my satellite viewing is PBS.
Another thing, even if you get a system with the Fortec receiver, if you have a relatively fast computer I'd recommend getting a PCI card for the computer. I have 2
Twinhan 1020a cards and a Broadlogic. I really recommend the Twinhan 1020a over the cards that Twinhan currently sells, but for PBS, it probably doesn't matter. You can still get 1020a's on Ebay.
But the PCI cards have the advantage that they will do AC3 audio, unlike the STB receivers. Actually the card itself doesn't do AC3, but the software does. The PCI cards will also do the PBS HD channel too, which is nice, but for that you need a pretty fast computer, unless you can also pick up a Roku HD1000, which they aren't making anymore either. For SD or if you're streaming to a Roku, all you need is about a 500MHz computer, but for HD, you need faster than 2 GHz. I have about a 2 GHz computer and it will just barely do PBS HD, but won't do faster HD sports feeds. However streaming to my Roku, everything looks fine.