I want to add another reciever to my account with TIVO. Is it possible to do this without running a nother cable from the dish, is there some kind of splitter that I could use?

One of the first things you will find if you spend time here on this site is that people need to ask questions including lots of detail. Yours, for instance.

Do you mean that you want to add another TiVo? You say "another receiver."

Or do you mean that you have one of the early TiVos that had two external inputs, you have a satellite receiver on one input, and you want to "add another receiver" (your words exactly) to that Tivo?

You do have to add another cable from the dish. You mean you only have one wire run down now? It took us (okay, we're installers) only about six months at the beginning of the whole DirecTV thing to learn that we should ALWAYS supply an LNB with two outputs and run two cables down from the dish, even if only one receiver were being connected.

You can't split a dish signal because the receiver sends DC up to the LNB to tell it which group of channels to look for, and if you split the signal, this gets messed up.

Actually I mean to add both a reciever and a new TIVO unit. I have 2 cables running from the dish currently

Each tuner requires its own coax, either directly from the dish, or from a multiswitch. This means that a dual-tuner DirecTiVo requires two coaxes. If you have a receive and a separate recorder, only the receiver requires a coax.

With two coaxes from the dish, you can connect two single-tuner receivers, either with or without stand-alone recorders. If you want to add a third (or more) receiver, you'll need a multiswitch, which is more than a simple splitter.

As Ernie mentioned, a receiver sends a DC voltage (13 or 14 for odd transponders, and 17 or 18 for even (I think)) up the coax to the LNB; two coaxs means two LNB's in one dish. A multiswitch sets one LNB to even and the other to odd.

Now the DC voltage from each tuner selects which coax it feeds from within the multiswitch itself, rather than at the dual LNB. Cascadable multiswitches allow a theoretically limitless number of tuners to be fed from a single dish.

Newer three-LNB dishes contain the multiswitch within the LNB. There are four coaxes because hi-def-capable dishes have a sort of second multiswitch that allows hi-def tuners to add a 22KHz signal to the DC to switch to the third LNB.

Anyway, to answer your original question: if you're using both coaxes already, meaning you have a dual-tuner receiver, then a 2-in/4-out multiswitch will be needed. If not, you're good to go with what you have now.

Thanks Larry and Ernie I now have a good grasp on what's going on!

Dumb Question from Don B,

I am told that for apartment dwellers who have the dish on their Porch that the installer runs the coax down to the apartments cable distribution box and than it is fed back into the apartment and distributed thru the wall coax plugs. Is this true ?????? And if so how would 3 or more receivers be connected ? Via a multiplexer ?

Or does the cable installer just drill a hole thru the Porch wall and than run 2 coax cables into the apartment ?

Depends on which is easier, and what the landlord allows.

Don, it sounds like you're describing a whole-building installation. Multiswitches are how several tuners feed from a single dish.

I would imagine an apartment install is a stand-alone system, with the cables direct to your receivers, or through a multiswitch.

Larry,

The coworker of mine who is having it done, just got off the phone with the installer and was told they run a tube under the sliding glass door and into the apartment and then under the carpet to the proper locations. The tube that goes under the door contains the coax cables.

He was told that the door will shut fine over this tube and will not pinch the wires.

I can't imagine it working. But I guess time will tell. I would think the wires would get pinched and break from constantly opening and closing the door.

I shall find out next week.
-Don