[mcSmarty]

I am trying to help father in law with directv install. He needs one HD DVR but has 5 other SD tvs throughout the house. Can you use one SD box to run more than one TV? If so do you just split the signal coming out of the back of the SD box? What is the practial range of the RF remote? If I am in garage will it work for box that is inside house 30 feet away (single story)?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Mertzen]

unless there is a lot of metal or dense stone in the house there shouldn't be much problem with 30ft on the RF remote.

You can run more then 1 TV off any D* box but it will be mirrored.
Since the HD DVR doesn't have coax out [ which is the easiest to distribute ] you'll need a RF modulator RCA>coax then into a 5 way splitter and then to the TVs.

 

[BattleZone]

I don't believe that the current SD receivers support RF remotes (someone correct me if I'm wrong). The SD-DVR does support RF remotes, but you must purchase the RF remote kit.

You certainly can split the coax output of an SD receiver and send the signal to any TVs you like, but of course, all TVs will have to watch the same channel. You don't get independent control on each TV unless each TV has its own receiver.

 

[carl6]

To clarify what Mertzen said, versus what you asked:

You can run multiple TV sets from either an SD or an HD receiver/DVR. The SD receiver will already have a built in RF modulator (channel 3/4), which you can split and send to multiple TV sets. The HD receiver does not have an built in rf modulator, but you can add one. So your father in law could feed all of his TV's from one HD unit, or have a separate SD unit for the SD tv's.

All tv sets that are connected to the same receiver must watch the same program at any given time. If he wants the ability to watch different programming on two (or more) tv sets at any given time, then each of those tv sets will need it's own receiver.

The last thing to consider is loading down the modulated SD signal. You can usually get away with splitting the output of an SD receiver once and feeding 2 tv sets. Much more than that and you may not have enough signal to give a good picture at all of the tv sets. Two solutions to this - one, use multiple modulators (or receivers), or two, get a distribution amplifier to feed all the tv sets.

Carl

 

[Nick]

I mirror the SD output of one stb to 3 displays in other rooms using one wireless
a/v sender and three a/v rcvrs -- simple and cheap -- been doing it for years.