Hello,
We recently moved into a house that was previously using cable. There is a main splitter in the garage with wires running to 4 different outlets in the house. Each outlet is a dual outlet. We have an oval 4LNB Directv system. We mounted it on the roof and received good signal strength on the tv we had directly attached. I am not quite sure how I want to run the cabling yet to the splitter in the garage so I simply have a coax cable (first mistake, it's not RG6) loosely running to the garage. I wanted to test the different outlets to make sure everything worked before fully installing the wire.

So, I have this regular coax cable running from one of the connections on the LNB directly to a splitter (i don't know the name of the splitter - looks to be a common "cable" type splitter - 1 in, 4 out). In our first test, we simply took a receiver in the house, ran a cable from the wall to the receiver and then from the receiver to the T.V. It worked fine. I then went to test the bedroom one using the same method - we cannot get a signal on that outlet nor the downstairs outlet.

We then moved the receiver to the garage (near the splitter) and connected the cable from the dish directly into the receiver. We then connected the "satellite out" connection to the splitter. I know thought I should be feeding all 4 outlets in the house with the signal from that receiver. I still was only able to get the one T.V. to work.


I think I've made a lot of mistakes here so maybe my original tests should all be thrown out and I should ask for instructions on how to start over.
1)Run RG6 cable from the satellite into the house - I would assume this is a given.
2)Can I use the existing splitter that is there to send signal to the other 4 outlets or do I need one specific for satellite frequency?
3)Can I use the existing wiring in my house? I assume it's regular coaxial as the previous owners did not have a dish.

I am under the assumption that all outlets work as they did have TV's at the outlets when we looked at the house. I can have someone come out and test the signals on them if needed.

Thank you for your help.

nbadger23,

Sounds like we need a bit more info here. Sounds like you've decided you want HD, since this is the dish you have. Please detail in each location what satellite receiver you intend to use. (For example, Standard Def receiver, standard def DirecTV TiVO, High Def receiver, High Def DirecTV TiVo.) Note that a HR10-250 DirecTV TiVo has different requirements from a HD receiver. Do you plan to attach an antenna for picking up over the air (OTA) HD signals, and possibly local channels?

Please don't continue down the path of hooking components up via standard splitters directly to the dish. Satellite receivers put out a DC voltage, and a low frequency signal to select which LNB to use. Hooking multiple pieces of equipment up via splitters can cause multiple pieces of equipment to feed different signals, possibly damaging the equipment.

bcf,
I had no High Def Receivers at this point. We have one standard RCA receiver and one standard Directv with Tivo receiver. I intend to use the standard RCA receiver (with a separate TIVO unit) in the downstairs living room. I intend to use the DirectTV Tivo unit in the bedroom. I do not plan on attaching an antenna as we get local channels over the satellite. At this point we should be satellite only with two receivers, possibly adding a third in the future but not in the plans right now. I got the oval dish so I could get local channels and went with the 4LNB for future use. Does this help? Thanks.

elbadger:

Where in MN? Check my profile for my email and let me know if I can lend a hand.

Nickster

Sorry nickster.. we're a couple hours south of you - but thanks for the offer!

Ok, long story short you need a 6x4 (or 7x4 if you want NTSC/ATSC signal as well) Multiswitch with a 22khz tone inserter, that is assuming that what you mean by your 4LNB Directv system is an OVAL dish that is pointed at 101/110/119 (otherwise, you could have an 18 inch dish with a Quad Output, at which point all you would need is a 4x4 (or 5x4) mulitiswitch).

Go to solidsignal.com to look at the best multiswitch for you...

Does the multiswitch take the place the regular (cable) splittler that is current in place? I have an oval dish with 4 outputs... so I'll run two rg6 cables (since I only have 2 receivers right now) down to the multiplexor and then from there the outputs can be regular coax cable to my outlets in the house?

nbadger23,

What you do depends mostly on how easy you wish to make your future upgrades. The dish you have now has a built in multiswitch with 4 outputs. Note that your DirecTV TiVo for the bedroom needs two feeds from the satellite to your bedroom. The SD receiver for the living room needs one feed from the satellite to your living room.

The least expensive solution is to run three RG6 feeds from the dish to where all your cables are home run in the garage. Note that it is as easy to run 4 as it is three, so I would highly recommend the small added expense of running 4 RG6 cables from the dish to the home run location in the garage. (This would simply adding a multiswitch in the future, as no need to fish one RG6 coax from the dish to the garage.) You will need two seperate cables run from the garage to the bedroom. If you only have one cable, you'll only have a single tuner in that room. You will also need a cable run from the garage to the living room. You can use coxial "barrel" connectors to connect a feed from the dish to each of the three feeds going to the rooms.

There is not really a need at present for you to buy a multiswitch, as the 4 output multiswitch in the dish is adequate for your present needs. If in the future you need more that 4 coaxial feeds throughout the house, you'll need to buy a multiswitch. The multiswitches are described by the number of inputs and outputs. You already have a multiswitch in the dish, so you would buy a cascadeable multiswitch. If you needed 8 outputs, you would buy a 4x8 cascadeable multiswitch. You could buy a 5x8 cascadeable multiswitch, which allows for an antenna input, and just don't connect an antenna. (I mention this, as the 5x8 is often what is stocked, as is typically very little extra money.) Buying more outputs than you need is not a problem, other than the added expense. You may find some 6 output multiswitches, but the 8 output units are almost the same cost.

I would try this with the cables presently run in the walls from the garage to the bedroom and living room. Using RG6 coaxial is preferred for the satellite, as it presents slightly less loss at the higher frequencies that satellite operates at. But if your coax runs are not real long, you will likely find the RG59 that is what has likely been used, will probably work.

It could be that the reason only one of the TV outlets worked with your original trial has to do with those DC voltages that were referred to by bcf1963. Every time you go to a channel on your DirecTV receiver, the receiver sends up either 13 volts or 17 volts, depending on which polarity of signal coming from the satellite is the proper one for the channel you want.

If you have one receiver sending up 17 volts and hook up other receivers sending up 13, because you happen to be tuning them to channels that work off of the other polarity, they will act as though there is no signal. So you can't tell.

But I'm glad you didn't move into a house in Australia with 200 volts (is it 220?) and bring your American appliances with you. Your test procedures would have you blow out all of your appliances before asking what you should do.

The multiswitch takes the voltage from the receiver and uses that to choose the correct signal to send down to the receiver. In addition to the voltage, a tone (22kHz) is used to indicate that signals are being requested from LNBs B and C. No tone means a signal comes down from LNB A.

The multiswitch requires four inputs: a 13 volt and a 17 volt with no tone, and a 13 volt and 17 volt with tone. As described, you could put a larger multiswitch downstairs if you wanted more than four outputs...but to do this, you must have all four outputs from the dish.

By the way, you describe this as a 4LNB dish. Do you mean a dish with 4 LNB outputs? That would be a dish with three LNBs, but 4 outputs...and not a 4LNB dish.