Dish 500 LNB question?

[Ronster]

My current setup is a Dish 500 with two(2) dual LNB's(one for 119 and one for 110). My question is if I change to a TWIN LNB with no exterior switches, is a realignment neccesary or is it exactly the same??

[Mark Lamutt]

Alignment should be exactly the same. You may have to repeak your dish, though when you change the lnbs out because you may jiggle it out of position a little bit working on it.

[scooper]

My question is why are you considering doing this, if you only have 2 tuners and everything is working fine , unless you're converting to a Dishpro Twin ? My 2 Dual LNB's /2 SW21's are working just fine ever since they were originally installed.

[Ronster]

It is a DishPro Twin, and it is being given to me for free. I want to hook it up when I get my replacement 721. Should be here today.
Thanks for the reply Mark.

[scooper]

That makes a lot more sense. You should be able to just use a DP34 switch and hook up all 4 tuners nicely.

[Jacob S]

You should not need a dish realignment unless the signal was not that great in the first place. You may have to do a check switch if you go from having 2 dual lnbf's and sw-21 to a twin with built in switch.

[scooper]

Not "May have to do a check switch" but rather "WILL have to do a check switch".

[HumpMan]

One thing that I discovered in replacing a Legacy Twin with a DishPro Twin is that the bandwidth stacking made it impossible to continue to use the surge suppressor that I had been using between my dish and receiver.

It had been working well with my legacy LNBs (single, then Twin) for several years, but when I put in a DishPro Twin, I lost transponders 2, 4, and 8 from 119. I guess it makes sense that the old surge suppressor didn't have enough bandwidth.

the HumpMan

[Jacob S]

Aint those spotbeam transponders?

[scooper]

119 - spot beam transponders are 1,3,5,7,, and 9, for 110, its 2,4,6,8 and 10.

[HumpMan]

119 - spot beam transponders are 1,3,5,7,, and 9, for 110, its 2,4,6,8 and 10.
Thanks for the clarification. I'm sure they weren't spotbeams that I was losing... I was losing channels like ESPN, FoodTV, SciFi, etc.

The other wierd thing that happened after the LNB swap was that I lost VCR control by the auto timers! The timers worked, but the VCR wouldn't record, and it'd been working perfectly for the last year or so! After talking to the tech support people at Dish, it seemed like it couldn't be anything directly related to the LNB swap or the removal of the surge suppresor.

After moving the 301 closer to the VCR, it all started working again. I guess my previous positioning of the 301 was some magic, perfect location that was something special. The only other possibilty is that the use of the DishPro Twin draws enough extra current to reduce the power for the IR emitter on the 301. The tech support guy suggested that if I wanted to test this, I could disconnect the cable, do a check switch to force the receiver back to legacy software, and then do the VCR test again. I did this and it still didn't work until I moved the 301 closer to the VCR, so I doubt the "reduced IR power" theory.

the HumpMan