Installation of Mulitple Satellite Receiver Lines

Here's what I have. I've got a family room downstairs with one Direct TV satellite receiver, and another receiver in the upstairs family room. What I want to do is to run multiple lines from the receiver downstairs to an additional 3 tv's (plus my wide-screen of which it's hooked up to now by an S-video line), and run the satellite receiver that's upstairs to an additional 3 tv's as well. I've purchased a

4-way distribution amplifier as a test pilot for the downstairs line as well as a diplexer. My thought process was that I could bring the satellite line out of the receiver and into the 4-way amplifier, and then run 4 lines out of that into each individual tv. While watching channel 3 on each of my tv's, all of the tv's should pick up the one channel being watched from the satellite receiver. I also purchased the diplexer (test pilot as well) from Best Buy as one of the associates suggested that I could run the 'rabbit style' antenna into one side of the diplexer, and the satellite line into the other (this requiring a diplexer for each individual tv). According to plan, if I was watching channel 3 I would pick up the satellite signal and if I was watching any other channel it would be a standard antenna feed (letting the family have the option of watching other local channels without having to watch what the original tv was watching). Keep in mind that I do pay the additional monthly fees for the local channels. Nothing has gone as planned. I've had the Direct TV for over a year now, and I wanted to install satellite on all of these TV's before I finished the rest of my basement. A few questions:

What am I doing wrong? Is this possible without buying additional receivers for each TV? If I do buy additional receivers, will I have to pay the $4.95/month service fee? Is there something else that I need to purchase to make my game plan work?

Please let me know as I thought I had this "perfect plan", but nothing seems to be working. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks-Jason

Reply to
jason
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Yousr plan sounds as though it ought to work. What are you seeing on your "additional" sets? Snow, locals only, satellite only?

Reply to
Mad Mac

You should have no problem. I have two receivers and two antennas, one for local TV and the other antenna for all other programming. The switched inputs from the antennas are fed to the respective receivers. The outputs from each receiver are then split using -3dB and -6dB spliters (no amplifiers) and in the first case two TVs are connected and view the programming selected on that receiver and in the other case 4 TVs view the programming selected on the second receiver.

Within your home there should be sufficient signal level to distribute to 4 sets without needing an amplifier. Good passive spliters should be adequate.

RB

jas> Here's what I have. I've got a family room downstairs with one Direct

Reply to
RB

Sound like you ran into what I did. My big screen has the ability to see the cable connection(same situation as the satellite). All of my other TVs are older and require a converter box because they can not see the digital channels. I ended up with separate boxes so I could change the channels and watch different programming on each.

Reply to
SQLit

If you want to watch the same program on all the TVs then using an amplified splitter on the output of the satellite receiver and feeding some number of TVs should work fine -- virtually any number of TVs could be fed with the correct combination of amplifiers and splitters. What results are you seeing? Have you taken into account that any one of the critical components in the system migh be bad "out of the box"?

Oh, and if the signal levels are wildly different a simple diplexer might not give you the results you are seeking -- you might want to leave it out for testing purposes. Even using selective channel inserters it gets tricky sometimes and adjacent channel interference is often a problem.

Reply to
John McGaw

I'll suggest to run RCA cables from the receivers instead of using the composite signal. Quality improves a lot. You'll need also IR repeaters for controlling the DTV receivers from the room where you are actually seeing the TV

Reply to
Faustino Dina

Only one thing. In your case, you _don't_ want a Diplexer to add the off-air antenna. A simple splitter/combiner will work just fine.

As long as you're accepting the limitations you've noted, sure.

Yes.

Other than changing diplexers for splitters, no.

The only reason I can think of for it not working is that you're connected to the wrong F jack on the back of the receiver.

Reply to
Mark

Others have already touched on the general plan -- splitters vs. diplexers and so forth. Assuming that you're taking the signal from the DTV unit and splitting it to your systems, you should be fine.

If you decide to actually set up additional DTV receivers throughout the house, you will be subject to the $4.95 per unit fee from DTV. The units will be nothing more than pretty paperweights until you activate them with DTV so expect to pay the monthly fee if you want to use them. In order to use them though, you'll need to buy a multiplexer and multiple LNBs for your satellite dish -- you can NOT simply split the satellite signal. The multiplexer will ensure that the signal remains even across the connections.

A single LNB on a dish, run to an internal multiplexer, can successfully run two feeds with no problems. A dual LNB run to a multiplexer can run up to 4 without issues. TriLNB could knock you up to 6 or so as well. Single and dual LNB configurations run from a single dish with a single LNB mounted on it -- tri LNB has 2 mounted on them and will likely require a special purchase (i.e., you won't be getting them at your local Circuit City). I currently have two receivers with 2 feeds on each that hook up to a 4 way multiplexer which in turn goes to a dual LNB -- signal strength is typically in the low 90% range.

James

Reply to
JNJ

I have a satellite receiver on our main TV. I have run coax from the VCR output through a splitter to three other sets. It goes through the LR floor into the basement, along the joists and upstairs again.. You can only get the one program the receiver is tuned to. But we also have an antenna so when we do want different programs, I can watc h the antenna in the LR while my wife watches the satellite upstairs in the bedroom. I used to have a switching arrangement. But it got too complicated and there was some signal loss through the switch even with a boosting amplifier. Another advantage of this set up is that I can duplicate tapes very easily by running the master on the main VCR and copying at one of the other locations (two of which have VCR's connected.) ds

Reply to
Dick Smyth

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