Confused about dual receiver/wiring

[TinaBlue]

I've never had satellite in my life, but we're moving to a new house that doesn't get traditional cable.

The previous owners have a new HD dish hooked up.

Please excuse my cluelessness, but the Dish Network site (and CS) has not been helpful in answering my questions. I'm guessing that the dish has wires that hook into the cable in the house? So we would be hooking up cables to each TV? If we get a dual receiver, how do we set up the second TV to receive an independent signal? And if we get a DVR, will it be impossible to watch live TV on both TVs while something is recording?

Do we need to ask the people we're buying the house from how the wiring is set up?

Thanks!

 

[garys]

I would check with a local retailer to check the house before you buy. Current owner may have moved/removed something you may need. Plus he should be able to explain the current setup as well what you may need.

 

[navychop]

Satellite and cable coax wiring schemes are not exactly the same. Cable may use splitters where you would not with satellite.

Let us consider a single dual tuner/dual TV receiver, HD DVR such as the ViP622 or ViP722. And let's consider that you have one dish pointing to satellites at 110, 119 & 129. You could have two wires running from the satellite dish to the receiver. Or you could have one wire running to what's called a "separator" (NOT a splitter) and two wires coming out of that separator to the receiver. This will get you two operational tuners on your receiver.

With these two tuners, you can:
Watch one program will recording another in the background.
Or you can watch one program, and have PiP running so you are monitoring a second program.
Or you can record two programs at the same time (possibly watching one).
Or you can watch or record one program on one TV while watching a second program on a second TV. Normally, the second TV is fed by a coax run from the first TV. But it could also be done wirelessly or by component cables (for example).

With an OTA antenna, you can feed thru that coax (or a separate coax) to also watch and record an OTA program- while STILL doing the above.

If you have a second satellite receiver, you could run a coax from the satellite dish to that one, and it would be completely independent of the first box.

To beat it to death: If you have two TVs running off the one satellite receiver, each could watch a program independently. You could also be recording one of those programs. Or with an OTA antenna also, you could record one and watch two separate programs, using all three tuners (2 are for the satellite, 1 is for OTA).

Hope this helps more than it confuses.

If you sign up for Dish, the tech coming out can check the wiring. He might decide to just run new, rather than check the old. To avoid a lot of extra wiring, you might have someone knowledgeable check it ahead of time. But I personally ran all my satellite and OTA wiring, so I have 3 independent sets of wires throughout my house. You may wish to do something similar. But since they have the antenna up, I'm sure the wiring is already in place and working.