Whole House install?

[KenO]

My house is wired for cable TV. Every room has a cable TV outlet (including the kitchen). When the house was built the contractor used coax cable (same size as from my Dish). Can I disconnect the cable TV input from outside the house and connect the coax cable from the Dish so every room would have the Dish signal? Will the signal carry throughout the house (about 4200 sq ft)? If so, then I can drop cable TV and buy the necessary receivers for the other rooms of the house.

[scooper]

In most "cable TV" type installations, they have traditionally just daisey-chained from one outlet to another. This is fine for cable TV, but is totally wrong for DBS - DBS requires each receiver to have a direct connection to the dish / multiswitch - in a setup called "Home-Run" .

[KenO]

Thanks for your reply. I don't think it is "daisey-chained". The cable input from outside the house (coax cable) feeds directly into a utility room into a box. From the utility room box it then has about 12 wires going to each of the seperate rooms. So, basically, there is a central station.

[rodb]

KenO you could co-locate all your receivers, DVD players, VCRs etc and connect them to a modulator. Four inputs on each modulator. You could have two modulators for up to eight items you want to distribute through the house. One coax would run from each modulator to the distribution point in your utility room. The distribution block can accept one or two modulator inputs. It can also accept a cable or off the air connection. The items connected to the modulator are modulated onto channels in either the cable or OTA channels.

It is most elegant. I have 4 501 receivers, 2 DVDs, 1 VCR and a camera connected to two modulators. I can watch any one on any TV in the house. Get receivers with UHF remotes so they will work in rooms other than where they are located. This link has a diagram of one modulator setup. Two inputs for modulators, one input for cable or OTA and eight outputs to TVs.

http://www.multiplextechnology.com/channelplus/support/an16.html

[Paulcl]

From the utility room box it then has about 12 wires going to each of the seperate rooms. So, basically, there is a central station.

Make certain that each of your 12 cables goes to a "single" jack. Some installs are a hybrid combination of daisy chain and star configurations.