Istallation: Number of "Lines"

[psuKinger]

First of all, hello all, I"m new to these forums. I am (hopefully) about to become a new DirecTV customer tomorrow, and I have some questions concerns that I've been trying to get some answers to. I have been referred to this site by a couple of posters on other message boards who say this is THE place to go for DTV questions/concerns.


So let me paint you the picture: I'm having 1 HD-DVR, 1 HD Receiver, and 1 Standard receiver installed into my brand-new-spanking new (new construction as of 1 week ago today) home. My basement is "finished" (no drop ceiling, literally ceiled off with plaster), and the problem, as I understand it, is that I have only 1 coax cable from my "Central Hub" (installed by GreyFox) to all 9 rooms in my house that have a coax outlet. What I'm being told is that I will need MULTIPLE cables from my dish to my Hub, and then from my Hub to the HD-DVR and HD-Receiver...



Question 1:
How many lines from the Satellite to my Hub is it going to take to feed these 3 receivers? What if I add a 4th Standard Receiver (which I intend to do in the not-so-distant future)?

How many lines will I need from my Hub to my HD-DVR? HD-Receiver? Standard Receiver?


Question 2:
What's the story with HD-Local channels? Will I not get ABC/NBC/CBS/Fox in HD without an additional wire of something that AVS is referring to as "Over the Air"?

Question 3:
I've heard of this Single-Wire-Multiswitch, but the DTV CSR people I've spoken to apparently havn't... any tips/ideas on how I could get ahold of one? I think this might solve my problem...




Any thoughts/ideas any of you have would be greatly appreciated...

[litzdog911]

Welcome to DBSTalk!

1. You need four cables from the satellite to your "hub" (your cable home run location). At the hub you'll want a Zinwell WB68 multiswitch that will provide eight outputs for your DVR (two cables) and two receivers (1 cable each), leaving you with four extra outputs for future expansion.

2. Two cables to the DVR (one for each tuner) and one cable for each Receiver.

3. DirecTV provides your major SD & HD Locals via satellite. Some other channels might only be available over-the-air (CW, PBS, independents). If you want to use an off-air antenna to receive those channels on your HD-DVR, you'll need another coax cable from the off-air antenna to the HD DVR. You cannot combine the off-air signals with the satellite signals on the same coax cable.

4. SWM is coming, probably later this year.

[Yankees251]

Does the "free installation" include the Zinwell WB68?

[yogi]

Welcome to DBSTalk!

1. You need four cables from the satellite to your "hub" (your cable home run location). At the hub you'll want a Zinwell WB68 multiswitch that will provide eight outputs for your DVR (two cables) and two receivers (1 cable each), leaving you with four extra outputs for future expansion.

2. Two cables to the DVR (one for each tuner) and one cable for each Receiver.

3. DirecTV provides your major SD & HD Locals via satellite. Some other channels might only be available over-the-air (CW, PBS, independents). If you want to use an off-air antenna to receive those channels on your HD-DVR, you'll need another coax cable from the off-air antenna to the HD DVR. You cannot combine the off-air signals with the satellite signals on the same coax cable.

4. SWM is coming, probably later this year.


3. You'll need to run a cable from the off air antenna to the hub. Diplex it on one of your line going to the HD - DVR. Put off-airs on one side of the diplexer marked u/V ant. 5-800Mhz. Put the satellite ant side to a BBC converter into the sat port of the diplexer. then deplex them out to the receiver.

[psuKinger]

3. You'll need to run a cable from the off air antenna to the hub. Diplex it on one of your line going to the HD - DVR. Put off-airs on one side of the diplexer marked u/V ant. 5-800Mhz. Put the satellite ant side to a BBC converter into the sat port of the diplexer. then deplex them out to the receiver.

Please forgive me, I have no idea what you just said :confused:

From what was explained above, I don't need to do any of that for ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, ABD-HD, NBC-HD, CBS-HD, and Fox-HD, correct? Only for other locals like CW or PBS, correct?



And I'm guessing in order to do this, I need to have a conventional "antenna" in addition to the Satellite that DTV should be bringing to my place tomorrow, correct?



I'll be honest, I"m not even sure I have an antenna... I would assume I do, but I'm not certain. If i'm going to get ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox in both HD and SD, I may not even worry about it...



But... if you could break that down in layman's terms, that would be appreciated as well :) I'm a Mechanical Engineer by education... so while I am somewhat technically inclined, I'm certainly not a *wealth of knowledge* when it comes to electronics, as I"m sure you can probably tell.

[fwlogue]

If you will want the couple of channels that you will not get via satellite you will need to get an antenna also. There are two ways of doing this depending on where you are located and how far from your towers. If you are close enough you maybe able to use an internal amplified antenna that would go inside the house near your HR20. The other option is an external antenna. If you use this you will need to run a line from the external antenna to your hub location as well. Now you will have two options from here a third line to your hr20 from here or use a diplexer, looks like a cable splitter except it will combine the antenna and satellite signal onto one cable. The diplexer will be marked Antenna and Satellite on the ports and then out on the other port. you will hook the cable coming from the antenna into the antenna port. on the satellite port you will first hookup a BBC they will come with the HR20 and H20 that you are gettting. Then hook the satellite cable into this. At the receiver end you will take the line that you combined the signal on and put another diplexer in this will now split the signals back out. run a line from the antenna port to the antenna port on the HR20 and a line from the satellite port to either sat 1 or sat 2 in on the receiver. You will then hook the other satellite line that you will run into the other BBC you will get and hook that into the other sat in port.

[PennHORN]

I like PSU am getting installed tomorrow. So if I diplex, do I need 3 BBC for each HR-20 or does the BBC near the hub suffice for one of the tuners. What if I have 4 receivers (3 HD-DVRs, 1 HD receiver)? Is it better to diplex or run extra coax runs. Do you need a multiswitch for OTA as well?