Do I have one or Two?

1095 Views 4 Replies 4 Participants Last post by Dr_fly, Oct 2, 2002

Dr_fly

Discussion Starter · Sep 30, 2002

Hello everyone. :hi:

I just bought a house and it came with a directv dish and the seller was nice enough to leave some kind of reciever too.

I have a few questions about my options from here.

I clearly have a round dish, but its placed quite high up so its hard to exactly see what is up there. It looks like I have 4 cables coming off the arm which thread down to a grey box. From this grey box a dual line (looks like 2 coax cables stuck side by side) goes to one room and 3 other single lines go to three other rooms.

First question:
I was considering TIVo which according to diretv.com means I nead a dual LNB. How can I tell if I have a dual or single LNB?

thanks

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Karl Foster

· #2 · Sep 30, 2002

The LNB is the white-capped thing that sits in front of the actual dish.

A dual-lnb dish will have two cables coming off of the LNB and a single LNB will have one cable coming off of the LNB.

It seems that inside the gray box will be a multi-switch that has coax wires coming from the LNB going in and four outputs going out. It seems that you already have a dual LNB dish.

In order to operate a DirecTivo properly, you will need two wires going into that room, other receivers require only one.

As far as the receiver goes, call Directv and order a new card for it and get it in your name. If there is an outstanding balance on the receiver, the CSR should be able to let you know. If there is, just go get a new system rather than deal with someone else's old balance on the receiver.

Hope that helps.

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spanishannouncetable

· #3 · Sep 30, 2002

Does the dish you have look like this -

or this -

?

Considering you have 4 lines running from it into a gray box, I believe I know, but let's make sure we're on the same page

The top picture is an 18x24 inch oval dish with 2 dual output LNBs. They feed all 4 lines into a multiswitch, and the one you have is likely a 4x8 (4 lines in x 8 out) or 5x8 (4 sat in, 1 antenna in x 8 out).

The bottom is a standard 18" round dish with a single dual-output LNB. Since only 2 lines come from this LNB and you have 4 coming down from the dish, I don't believe you have this one.

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Richssat

· #4 · Oct 1, 2002

I am gonna go out on a limb here.

Is the dish mounted on a large tripod type mount?

The dual cable running down to the living room. Is it black by chance?

If so then it sounds like you have a single reciever set up with backfeed lines going to three other locations. Chances are the setup was origionally a primestar install (gray box tipped me off). They probably diplexed the feed from the living room back to the gray box then split it out to the other 3 locations.

If it is set up like this then you are in good shape. If you need a mulitiswitch, it can be placed in the gray box and the backfeed lines can be used as feed lines for new recievers. As a bonus, the location with the dual cable run is wired for a PVR (tivo or UTV).

I could be totally off base but I have seen set ups like this before. I did a lot of the primestar conversions.

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Dr_fly

Discussion Starter · #5 · Oct 2, 2002

Cool!

karl:
thanks for the info, I never realized the receive could be stuck with charges on it. I was hoping to use it and wait for the new tivo's, now maybe I will just have to wait with only fuzzy OTA until they come out.

spanish:
it does not look like the top one. Its clearly not oval and there in a single cone arm not a split arm with two cones. Its quite high so I could be wrong but with binoculars it looks like more than two cables running off the arm.

Richssat:
I am not at home to look at the mount but the cable is black going into the living room. Also one of the lines has a piece of paper on it labeled "In/Out" the other is unlabeled. Left in the living room with the receiver was a "splitter/combiner" with one short piece of cable on it but unattached to anything.

Thanks for all your help everyone sounds like I am tivo ready.
Now the question is can I stand to wait with 5 OTA channels until the new tivo's come out.

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