Unconventional installation.

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James [a_leon]

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Jul 21, 2014
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Hey guys, I'm copying this word-for-word from another forum, hoping for a little bit of insight from someone else who's tried something crazy.

Greetings. I am relatively new to DirecTV and have had a situation (and opportunity!) placed in my lap and I'm hoping that someone here may shed some light before I put in a lot of time, money, and effort.

Background information, you can skip this if you want.
I am a student at a university. While here, I am the head projectionist and equipment supervisor for the theater on campus (we run a Barco DP2000 digital projector fed by a DSS100/DSP100, with a Gefen scaler which allows us alternate content including DirecTV, as we have a commercial contract and a dish mounted on the roof). In addition to that, I am a student technician with our telecommunications department. One of the things I get to help work on and maintain is our cable tv headend (we have 64 DirecTV receivers feeding into Blonder Tongue encoders (HDE-2H-QAM), along with several SCOLA feeds, NASA, MTVU, etc). The four LNB feeds hit an amplifier before hitting 8-way splitters to hit 8 Zinwell MS6x8WB-Z multiplexers

The problem.
The location of the theater on campus is that of a lecture hall. This particular building is in a bit of a valley, so our dish is pointing at a hilltop through trees. When a good wind comes, we start getting all kinds of problems. The dish feeding the head end, however, is at the top of that hill and experiences none of those problems.

The proposal.
I want to either relocate our dish to the top of that building, or abandon our dish all together and split the signal pre-amplification to feed a separate multiplexer, to then feed an HFC to utilize the existing fiber optic cable throughout our campus to get then utilize the receiver end of an HFC to get back onto coaxial line to feed receivers. Additionally, I wouldn't mind also using a combiner to inject the campus cable into this same line.

The questions.
...has anyone tried having a dish mounted remotely and utilizing an HFC to get signal to their building? Does anyone see any reason why this shouldn't work, since they make l-band HFCs and ones that will do 2MHz to 3000Mhz (though, typically more around 2200MHz)? For anyone that has sent the l-band along with cable TV...does it pass through a tap alright or would we have to reduce the 1/2 hardline to RG6 and hit a splitter to get the satellite signal off of the cable TV?

The alternatives.
One might ask why we want this when there's such an extensive cable setup already. Well, we show events for student orgs and those events may be on channels not normally offered (not mentioned, but I intend to also get a 95W international dish). It's very expensive to add additional channels (around the tune of $8,000) to what is existing.

So...did I miss any important information? Any questions?

Is this the most complicated setup you've heard of? What other complex setups have you seen or heard of?

EDIT: A, perhaps, simpler question which is fundamentally what I am asking. Is there any reason why I could not have a satellite remotely mounted and send the l-band via fiber to another location using an HFC?
 
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:welcome to Satelliteguys James!

Your install is over my head!
 
Would a drawing of the existing setup and proposed setup be beneficial? I'm not sure when I'll have time to make them, but I can certainly try.
 
Yup, got me scratching my head. I've tried reading this for nearly 15 minutes and can't really put together what you have going on. An MDU guy might be of more help than I would be


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Hutch is an installer, so if you are confusing him, think how the rest of us feel! :eek:
 
Really need to get a professional crew in there, that can run a Fiber feed from the Campus Head-end, to the other building for Fiber to the Node. Biggest problem is getting the higher ups to okay the funding for something that will probably in the upwards costs of $100k or more.

You already sound like you have close to a million invested in the Head end.
 
We already have fiber in place with plenty of spare strands. If not, I'd run it through our ductbank. The student techs do all telecommunications wiring in campus, indoor or outdoor.

I am confident in my ability to wire all of this, I'm just trying to see if anyone has tried using fiber for DirecTV. We use l-band HFCs for a 10m dish we have (getting standard def or local channels or something), so I know fiber and satellite works. Just not if it does with DirecTV. My plan is to test by putting the HFCs between our current dish and receivers.

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I would still consult with a company that does this stuff. Plus if you run into a roadblock. They can help you out. If you have an iPhone. Have you tried the SatToolz app, to see if you can get a better LOS on that other building? But personally if you have the fiber in place. I would continue to do that.

Plus at the same time, for those areas that still have Copper running to them. It would give you a chance to upgrade using the Fiber for better speeds. Plus side is that Lightening does not kill Fiber. Just shovels and critters, if unprotected.

I have seen Fiber strands stripped by ants. They love the gel that is used to flood the cable, along with the Citrus based cleaners used to clean that gel off.
 
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I would still consult with a company that does this stuff. Plus if you run into a roadblock. They can help you out. If you have an iPhone. Have you tried the SatToolz app, to see if you can get a better LOS on that other building? But personally if you have the fiber in place. I would continue to do that.

Plus at the same time, for those areas that still have Copper running to them. It would give you a chance to upgrade using the Fiber for better speeds. Plus side is that Lightening does not kill Fiber. Just shovels and critters, if unprotected.

I have seen Fiber strands stripped by ants. They love the gel that is used to flood the cable, along with the Citrus based cleaners used to clean that gel off.
Our stuff is in concrete encased duct banks. So thankfully we won't have to deal with people digging it up :D.

I have not tried the app. I know when it was installed we had...something. That was before my involvement, however. But with our location, the damn hill causes nightmares.

The problem I'm running into is....I don't know companies that do this, plus we're....remote. We've done this all in house for about 20 years now when charter upped the price, got mad when we tried to negotiate, and then cut the hardline feeds into campus and ripped out their equipment (taps, amps, etc).

Once I get this figured out, next step is getting Technicolor to give us content via satellite...

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There was a thread a few months back at dbstalk about a similar situation. Perhaps a search there will give you some help.
 
There was a thread a few months back at dbstalk about a similar situation. Perhaps a search there will give you some help.
I personally would not ask over there. It is the same group that runs the directv forum, and act like no one should be on there, unless they are in that click.

This would be the transport that the OP would need, along with the other piece of gear. http://thorbroadcast.com/sklep-209/produkt-148 I think that Thor Broadcast, along with maybe Markertek would be the place to get the equipment. Maybe a local broadcast engineer for one of the local stations that has done this kind of stuff, can help the OP with the hard stuff, or designing of the remote plant, to work with the main plant.
 
That was the first one I found Chip. The ones being acting like little girls in their own little club house in that thread. Are the same ones that run forums.directv.com as their own little clubhouse. At least here we are all adults and have been helpful for the OP. I think the first link I posted from dbstalk is about what the OP is looking for maybe.

I know a lot of Navy SITE techs, that would have no problem jumping on this kind of stuff. The problem is getting the school to let go the money for the need of the project. They look at this stuff, like the Red Headed Step child of the school. Even though tech is what makes the school run these days.
 
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