Correction:
Sorry I am new here and was just going through everything and never saw anything updated or corrected on this.
For you to get all your basic plus
HD channels, you need to be able to see 3 satellites.
Yes, thats 3 not 5!
For most folks in the eastern US, you need a Dish 500 plus an extra dish (a 300 or a 500 with only one lnb attached) or a new one dish solution was recently added, the Dish 1000.4.
In the west, or west of the Mississippi for the most part, a Dish 1000.2 is your Dish.
The two dishes for the east looks at 61.5, 110 and 119 orbital positions.
The Dish 1000.4 for the east looks at 61.5, 72.7 and 77.
MPEG-4 receivers are a must for this set up.
The Dish 1000.2 for the west looks at 110, 119 and 129.
This is the set-ups for the contiguous 48 states.
AK, HI, VI and
PR use other larger dishes but they cannot get everything the rest of us can.