Mulltiple TVs [Archive]

New2Dish

10-19-03, 09:42 PM

We just built a new house and were told by the cable company that we would be able to receive cable. After six months, still no cable and no sign of ever getting it. We decided to get satellite TV through Dishnetwork. They came out and installed the dish. We got three receivers installed. They also installed a SW34 multiswitch from dishnetwork because there were only two RG-6 cable running to the outside of the house. The switch is mounted inside my leviton structure media cabinet. There are 2 cable run from this media center to all rooms of the house. We have six TV's that we watch (only a max of three at a time). I want to backfeed a TV to each of the installed receiver in addition to receiving my local channel though a OTA antenna. Can someone give me guidance on how to do this or point me to a web site that will show exactly what I need to do. The installation tech said I could do this with diplexers and splitter rather easily but when explaining it to me his final words were once you have everything in hand it will come easy. I just don't want to make a mistake and mess it up.....

paulh

10-20-03, 10:21 AM

For one receiver, its relatively easy. It just becomes more complex and needs somewhat more expensive equipment with multiple receivers.

I assume you only need one wire going to any sat. receiver, and the other line is unused (or currently only being used by the OTA antenna)

Diplexer combines an OTA signal with the sat feed into one coax line. (The same diplexer can be used at the receiver end to split off the Sat and OTA ) (note: diplexer are possible since the sat frequency is higher than OTA frequencies. The diplexer blocks the sat signals and voltages from reaching or entering the OTA feed

A Splitter can split or combine OTA signals. A splitter cannot be used where sat signals/voltages are present.

To make it easy, I'll talk about one receiver:

At the receiver, you have one wire used as Sat-in, and the other unused. Just plug in the Coax out (channel 3/4) into the unused wire. You now have one wire as "to TV1", and one wire used as "from TV1."

In your media cabinet, you can then send that CH3/4 "from TV1" to every other TV in the house, using a splitter and/or distribution amplifier (recommended for multiple TV's like you have)

Now, to get your OTA antenna added to the CH 3/4, you just use a splitter to combine OTA and CH3/4(From TV1) before your distribution amplifier. Now the rest of the TV's in your house will be able to tune into CH3/4 for satellite and the normal numbers for the OTA stations.

Now, you probably want to watch OTA on the TV that has your sat connected. To do this, in your media cabinet, you add a diplexer after the SW34, to "diplex" the distribution amp output with the sat feed. This one output is then the "to TV1" feed we talked about before.

Now that you have a combined sat - OTA feed going to your TV, then you use another diplexer to "split" off the OTA from the sat feed before the sat-in. You then just plug in the OTA feed into your TV!

Now, you can watch OTA on all TV's and that single receiver on all TV's, and the locations with the other 2 receivers can be used like this: Instead of a "to TV2" and a "from TV2", you can have a "Sat in2" and a "TV in2". The "sat in2" remains the same from the SW34, and the "TV in2" is the other wire that is being fed via the distribution amp (so you get OTA).
If you only want to use one wire, then you just add a diplexers at the SW34 to "combine" the OTA distribution amp with the SW34 feed, then another diplexers to separate the OTA and sat feeds before the sat-in of the receiver.

Note1: I assumed that you are displaying sat using s-video or RCA composite on that main TV, so you have a free coax input for your main TV. so you get stereo sat there.

Note2: I assumed you do not have any OTA stations using the VHF Channel 3 or Chanel 4. The above setup will block those OTA frequencies.

Note3: Once you get the one TV working, you can move onto the more advanced adding multiple TV's.

Multiple Receivers's will need more expensive modulating equipment
and possibly frequency blockers, as you cannot set one receiver to channel 3 and a second to channel 4 as the sat receiver's built-in modulators are not exact enough to allow such a combination. There are modulators that will make a satellite receiver's output (or VCR, DVD, Security camera.... anything with a RCA or S-video output) to be output onto another unused VHF channel (i.e you'd have ch50 for Sat1, ch55 for Sat2, Ch 60 for sat3)

Since ch3/4 is mono, you can also get more expensive MTS stereo modulators to send a stereo sat channel to every TV in the house.

For more info, you can look at the home integration/distribution forum at www.avsforums.com