DirecTV distribution system question

[JonC]

Greg:

Thanks.  I just called them and will be picking one up this afternoon.  

I haven't hooked up the new dish yet, but I did get my receiver up and working.  I primarily bought it for OTA right now, and was pleased to get digital from 4, 10, 12, and 58 right off the bat (and I'm in Sheboygan county!).  The picture is outstanding - especially the football games yesterday.

FWIW - the $99 RCA dish I picked up at Best Buy has 3 LNBs, and the multi-switch is now built into the arm.  No need for a Sat C kit anymore! I don't know if this changed recently, but I was pleasently surprised when I opened up the box for the dish!

Thanks to all for your help!

Jon

[borghe]

JonC - You are probably going to hate me for this....

You can't use the built in multi-switch AND the 5x8 mutli-switch inline. You have to use one or the other. What will happen if you use them inline is you will lose all Sat "B" and "C" signals out of the 5x8. The satellite selection is controlled by outputting a 22Khz tone that standard multi-switches don't pass along. The selection normally happens in the multi-switch so there is no reason for them to pass the tone. The result is that you either are limited to only one multi-switch, or you have to buy a very expensive multi-switch that does pass through the 22Khz tone. When I say very expensive, it is usually around $200-400 for a 2x4 and upwards of $600 for a 5x8.

If you want to use the 5x8 multi-switch you will have to remove the built-in switch from the dish, combine the Sat "C" cable and a Sat "B" cable, and plug the resultant cable into an 18V input on the multi-switch. This is the only option. If you use the 4x4 switch built into the dish you will be limited to 4 lines that are able to see all birds.

[JonC]

Why would I hate you?  You just saved me hours of frustration!

When I get to Skywalker, I'll ask them if they have the correct parts.

Thanks for the heads up!

Jon

[borghe]

Make sure along with the multi-switch that you get a Sat "C" combiner if you don't alerady have one. It'll look just like a normal cable splitter. It is needed to correctly combine the two signals into one.

[JonC]

I already have an 18" round dish that's feeding a 3x4 multi-switch.

I've purchased a 3 LNB Oval for use with the HDTV.

I don't mind having two dishes (as explained above, I already have a second dish that's not used anymore, but I haven't taken it down yet).

It seems to me that I should be able to
1) Use my current 3x4 to feed the four lines that I have - none of those receivers are HD and won't be for the near future.  (Locals are on the main bird, and I won't be subscribing to spanish programming in the near future).
2) Use 2 of the four feeds that I have off of the new dish to feed a) the HD receiver and b) the other open receiver (I have a total of 6).  I'll still have two more feeds that could be used for HD receivers sometime in the future.

That way, I can get by on the cheap (i.e. $0) for the time being.  When I convert all of my receivers to HD in the future (probably another year or more away) I can look at getting a distribution system to handle all of this (and hopefully DirecTV hardware suppliers will have their act together and make this much simpler!)

All right, it's not elegant, but it seems to me that this should work... opinions?

Jon