To all who went to CES or are more in tune with DirecTV than I am. We have been Comcasted to death lately and I've been sticking 5 wires up in the attic for Directv for a while. Now I've got a house that can't (and probably never will) get cable. Satellite is the only option. I have a prewire coming up really soon and want to make sure I have the latest info to do it correctly. There will be 9 TVs but only 2 people living there full time. I'm thinking its serious overkill to have 9 receivers so I suggested 3... two being DVRs with a matrix switcher. With an RTI RP6 I've got the routing taken care of but what the hell are these guys coming out with soon? I can't get an answer from the snot nosed Directv kid.

This house will not be retro-wirable so I've got to get it right now. Any satellite gurus with the latest information?

HEres a thought.

If you have a crawl/basement, run a 1" Carlon down to there from each tv and run an 1 1/4 or 2" from where the dish is to the crawl. Just a thought

The house is on concrete pad with radiant floor heating and has an observatory with a flat roof for much of the attic which is basically a 3/12 pitch where it does exist... retrofitting will be a nightmare!

oh... and mostly ornate stucco on the outside.

I am probably going to suggest a central wiring closet with a 5 conductor extron, 2 rg6, a cat6 and a 22/2 to each set... then a matrix switcher. If they strip down and go modulation...I've got it. If they want tuners local to the TVs I've covered Tivo. If the boxes network I've got a network cable. Now let's see if the price makes them poop.

With this new 5 LNB setup I've heard about... how many cables would you run to the dish. I do have a nice unobstructed view of both Dish and Directv but I dodn't go to CES so I really have NO clue what their future plans are.

Roland, from the info I've gotten, you only need 4 wires from the dish to the multiswitch. The problem with DTV's new system is that they are now using freq. down in the UHF area, so you cannot diplex their signals any more. To cover my ass for the future, on new pre-wires we are running 7 RG-6, 6 for sat, 1 for off-air from the roof or attic to the distribution cabinet, and 3 RG-6 to individual tv's, along with 2 Cat-5E.

I always run 6. This will handle a regular hd signal (4) as well as international programming (2), which from my expeirience is very rare. So if you want to be completely covered run one additional coax to handle an HD-UHF/VHF antenna for a total of seven. As far as the amount of receivers you put in the house you would just purchase the appropriate multiswitch. I haven't heard about the new diplexer B.S. but if thats the case I would run at least two coax to each TV location.

Greg C has the right idea!

We also run one extra for XM

Mike

Ditto on Gregs fomrula, sometimes even throw in an extra Cat 5 or 2 and also run a ground from Sat location to an accesible bonding point.

I am glad someone started this thread.. As DTV has changed so has our pre-wire for SAT.. I recall a long time ago when it was three lines plus an Ant feed to the head end... Now we use 4 but with the new Nose Cone coming up that is going to offer local HD channels via Sat (Not ANT) we are migrating to 5 possibly 6...