Equipment/Install Question

[BuckeyeDad]

Hello! I am venturing into unchartered waters for me, but I am hoping to get some straight answers from people here as to what pieces of equipment I need to complete my changeover. I have tried to work with Dish Support but they are only interested in getting me on their leased plan with an 18 mo committment.

My Current Setup:
Dish Pro 500 Twin. The 2 dish cables first run into a Terk antenna switch and combine with the 2 Terk cables. The 2 output cables run down to my cable box. From there, one goes upstairs to my 301 receiver and one goes downstairs to an additional 301 receiver. There are no switches in the cable box that I can see. Both receivers have a diplexer to separate the Terk antenna and Dish signals into their appropriate inputs.

The cable system in this house is somewhat of a nightmare, but the short of it is, I have one cable downstairs that is available for loopback that runs back out to the cable box (so 2 Dish cables and 1 unused in the cable box).

What I am trying to do:
I want to eliminate the 2 receivers and condense to a single 322 receiver downstairs. I was hoping to combine the 2 Dish cables into a single input at the cable box, use the existing downstairs line to connect into this input, and use the Dish Pro Plus separator to separate the signal back out into the receiver. From there, I would like to use the available loopback cable to run from the receiver back out to the cable box, and connect into the line that runs upstairs via a coupler or something of the like.

I am really not interested in running any more cables at this time if I do not have to, which relates back to the cabling layout nightmare.

Based on my configuration:
1) Do I first need to get a DP+ LNBF on the Dish to replace the DP Twin (in order to use a single line and/or the separator)?
2) What kind of switch do I need at cable box to combine the 2 Dish cables into a single output to run downstairs into the DP+ separator?
3) Is there anything else I am missing or should be aware of before proceeding?

Thanks guys!

[oljim]

With the Dish PP twin you only need one line to the 322,
Why are you doing this, you gain nothing going from 2 301s to a 322 why not use a DVR

[BobaBird]

1) Yes, get the DPP Twin.

2) None, you'll only use 1 output from the DPP Twin all the way to the DPP Separator behind the 322.

3) Make sure you have a phone line available. As a 2 room receiver, the 322 is subject to the "no phone penalty."Why are you doing this, you gain nothing going from 2 301s to a 322 why not use a DVRIndeed. Your proposed $xx upgrade will save you only $5/mo. How long will it take to recover that? How much longer is the term of the commitiment, and if you don't intend to be around that long why upgrade?

Just occurred to me, and I may not have this right since I get a bit confused on the upgrade options, but if the lease upgrage makes the 322 your only receiver, you may have to pay a lease fee on your only box, wiping out savings from not having a 2nd box.

You could get a 625 or 522 upgrade instead. You wouldn't recover the upgrade cost, and your monthly expense would increase by about $1*, BUT you would gain DVR features on both TVs, have stereo instead of mono sound routed to TV2, and be able to use digital audio to a home theater at TV1.

*DVR fee replacing addl receiver fee. Your cost actually could go down $5 if you already have America's Everything Pak and a phone line connected.

[CABill]

I'd echo the other guys' question about objective. You could save $5/month if you were to PURCHASE a 322 on your own. Right now, one of your 301's doesn't have a fee but the other gets a $5/month additional receiver fee (or lease fee if they belong to DISH instead of you). Either way, you presently pay $5/month in addition to whatever programming you subscribe to. If you get a receiver from DISH as an existing customer upgrade (DIU program), that receiver will have a $5/month fee ($6 if a ViP, but that doesn't apply). It is odd, but it would cost you the same amount to keep one of your 301s and upgrade the other to a 322 as it would cost to upgrade and replace both 301s to a 322. Doing the DIU upgrade comes with the 18 month commit, but the install is on DISH, not your pocket.

You could save the $5/month with a purchased 322. Same for a purchased 522/625 DVR, but if you don't subscribe to AEP, the DVR fee of $5.98 would apply and actually cost you more than you are now paying. I GUARANTEE that you would find the DVR features worth a buck!! Anyhow, to feed both tuners off a single coax line, you would have to replace the LNB with a DP+ Twin. But you might not need to do that. It sound to me like you have both dish cables going to a wiring closet and you have two coax lines from the wiring closet to one of the receiver locations (and just a single coax to the other location). If that matches your setup, it would be possible to send both dish LNB signals to a 322/522 downstairs to feed the two tuners. You would need 1 more diplexers though - at least if I read you correctly. Right now, you have the Terk being the "source" diplexer and just a single diplexer at each receiver? If you can run one of the Terk signals in the closet straight to the downstairs and its diplexer. With two diplexers added to the "other" coax from downstairs to the closet, you can carry the dish portion to the downstairs and also carry the 322/522 RF output combined with OTA signals back from downstairs to the wiring closet. One of those two diplexers (say at the downstairs receiver) can be the one from upstairs because it wouldn't be needed and the one you purchase goes in the wiring closet. The "LNB" leg of that diplexer would come from the Terk, the < 950 MHz leg would go to the upstairs bedroom and straight to a TV, and the common leg would connect to the downstairs coax. It would cost more to go with the DP+ Twin, but you wouldn't need to buy another diplexer. But a caution there - the DP+ Twin may be more demanding of your existing coax, diplexers, and the Terk. And a caution about the convoluted diplexer solution is that every splitter/combiner/diplexer comes with an insertion loss that could effect the resultant picture quality upstairs.

Do consider the 522/625 though - even if might be disabled by the court. :)

[BuckeyeDad]

Thanks for the responses guys. I picked up the 322 for next to nothing, thus I have no reason to lease one from them from now until eternity (actually one guy at Dish said the lease fee goes away after 18 months and other said it never goes away, so I don't know). On top of that, Dish wants to charge me 100 bucks to come out and hook everything up.

I also want to upgrade to a higher package so I am trying to do this with as little change in my monthly bill as possible. I wanted to avoid the 6 dollar /mo DVR fee as nice as it sounds.

The diplexer scenario sounds slightly confusing. Having said that, if I were to purchase the DP+ LBNF, is it as simple as taking the old one off and plugging in the new one? Or are there realignment issues involved after it is in place?

[CABill]

You can just replace an existing Twin with a DP+ Twin w/o reaiming the dish. If you only fee the 322, you would only need one connection "active". It can just terminate in the wiring closet.

I misread that you had a legacy Twin. If it is a DP Twin now, both odd and even are already passed on the coax so ignore the caution about it being more demanding.

I recognize the diplexer solution isn't straight forward - it is just an alternative to buying the DP+ Twin. You could just hook up the 322 downstairs now and experiment with sending channel 101 back to the wiring closet with the spare coax and from there to the upstairs just to see what the RF video will look like. You will probably want to add a couple of splitter/combiners so that what you send to the upstairs TV is the 322's TV2 and the OTA you brought downstairs via the current diplexer.