[smithrh]

OK folks, hopefully some of you kind people can steer me in the right direction(s)...

I currently have a single round dish pointed at 101, which feeds two DirecTivo boxes that I want to keep.

I'd like to add two HD DVRs.

My current wiring from the dish consists of two coax cables fed nicely up into the attic where I have (I think) a multiswitch. That box takes to two coax cables from the dish and provides a lot of outputs, which I use to feed the 2 DirecTivos over existing cabling. Works great, nary a complaint since it was put up, jeez, 6-7 years ago now.

I can't see 119 and I don't think I would want/need any programming coming from 72, so I think that means I'd need the 3lnb dish.

The main question is, can the existing two cables be used to connect the 3lnb dish to a suitable multiswitch (or what-have-you) that can feed both the 2 HD DVRs and also the 2 DirecTivos? For a while I thought that perhaps there was SWM(?) that could actually use only one cable, but if I read it correctly, that would be with newer boxes only.

Any insight or comments?

 

[Michael D'Angelo]

You would need two more lines ran from the dish to the attic to make a total of four.

The multi-switch will need to be replaced with a Zinwell WB68 which will be supplied by DIRECTV.

As for the dish you will need the Slimline3 since you can not see SAT 119 but I am not sure what all markets have it right now.

 

[smithrh]

I'm in the Chicago area...

 

[Michael D'Angelo]

I'm in the Chicago area...

I am not sure what markets have it already and what markets don't. I believe it is suppose to be released nationally soon but I am not sure what the chances of getting one is.

 

[Mertzen]

Yes. SWM doesn't work with legacy boxes. It has legacy outputs but not enough to feed 2 Tivo's.

 

[smithrh]

Could it feed one DirecTivo, or perhaps could I just connect one cable to each DirecTivo?

Just curious, not even sure if this would work. What I mean is that if the DirecTivos could only use one receiver at a time, that might be OK...

 

[Mertzen]

Could it feed one DirecTivo, or perhaps could I just connect one cable to each DirecTivo?

Just curious, not even sure if this would work. What I mean is that if the DirecTivos could only use one receiver at a time, that might be OK...

A SWM-8 Module has 3 legacy ports so you could sent a dual to one DTivo and a single to the other. But SWM8 isn't normally available to residential customers.

 

[smithrh]

I'm really hoping to avoid pulling another cable, it would be.... difficult.

Thanks for the responses!

 

[Johnnie5000]

I'm really hoping to avoid pulling another cable, it would be.... difficult.

Thanks for the responses!

When pulling lines from an attic gets easy let me know :lol:

 

[smithrh]

Let's just say I was about 5 seconds away from calling 911 to get my near-unconscious bud extricated from the crawl space. He was jammed in there good and it was nice and toasty in there.

 

[carl6]

It is possible to use a mix of multiswitches, you don't have to have one or the other. You do need a new dish, and to use external multiswitches it would be the 5-LNB slimline (or, when it is available, the 3-LNB slimline).

Take the four outputs from the dish and route them to four high frequency, power passing splitters. Then feed the outputs from the splitters to the two multiswitches. You can feed your existing multiswitch using just the 13V and 18V no-tone outputs from the dish, and feed the SWM with all 4 coax from the dish (just make sure you keep the same coax going to the same input on the 2 multiswitches). Then you feed the two older units from the old multiswitch, and you feed any of the new receivers/dvrs from the swm.

Carl