Hi Guys,
I hope you can help me again. So far you're 3 for 3! I am purchasing a second home that has a single LNB dish that it would appear was never utilized as the cable terminates at the sill of the house and there doesn't appear to be anything inside that looks like satellite wiring. Not a problem I can handle that.
I'd like to use the existing dish for now as the cable is nicely buried underground to the house. Do I need a multi switch or a di-plexer to be able to operate more than one receiver on the single line from the dish?. Or should I just suck it up and get the triple LNB dish with the built in multi switch and run more cables to the dish? I have the 3LNB dish at my current home although I don't utilize the other 2 lnb's at the moment.
Your advice is most appreciated! Thanks.

BT

I would say it's time to get out the trencher...you will need at least one more lead. If you were to use a diplexer all you would be able to do is bring in off air antenna service. If the multi switch is located in the LNB then you will need up to four leads, two if you bring the switch into the dwelling.

If you trully want to have more than 1 satellite unit and don't want to dig in a new cable at this point your best bet is to install a stacked LNB. It is a single LNB that wil run both the 18V and 13V Signals down a single cable and with the install of a unstacker at the other end of the cable you will be able to use any 2in whatever output multiswitch you like for as many boxes as you may need.

And those two answers assume that you only want basic satellite. You can feed one receiver with your present dish, or get a stacked system and feed any number of receivers with non-HD (and maybe non-local) programming. You would unstack the signal and feed it into a two-input multiswitch.

As soon as you go to multi LNBs, though, even a stacked system would require two cables, and I am not sure they have that totally figured out yet.

In some markets, the local stations are not on LNB A, which is the LNB you have with a single-LNB dish. In all markets, HD stations are not on LNB A. This means that you can replace the dish with a multi-LNB dish with a built-in multiswitch, but the single cable you have can only take one signal to the house.

So whether you have to trench or not depends on which LNB gets locals and whether you want HD programming or not. For me, I would not get involved in a stacked system because I hate to buy something that I know I will replace. The cost of the parts for stacking would help with the trenching.

Thanks to all,
I think I really knew the answer when I asked the question. I'll be trenching about 100 feet, put up the triple dish and run all 4 wires while I'm at it and be done. Thanks again for the advice!!

BT

What the hell! Run a 2" conduit! Or at least run 7 wires!

Four for current dish
1 for TV antenna if that location could work
2 for the next thing they will bring out that will suddenly require two more cables. You could always put a couple of video cameras up on the pole and run the signal in on those last two wires (Except you probably know how I feel about running video on RG-6).

don't forget to use direct burial cable, or you will end up with problems down the road, and the 2" conduit is also a good idea, just keep the conduit empty except for a pull string

Once again, all good ideas. I hadn't considered the conduit. That sounds like the answer. Thanks again guys!!

BT