DirecTV Install Help & Questions?

[BFG]

For give me folks as I am a resident Dish Network guy, but my brother for whatever reason is into DirecTV so I'm trying to research what can be done at a new townhouse he's moved into.

My question is this-

Is it possible to run 1 cable from a DirecTV satellite into a centrally located wire closet and then have whatever splitters and switches in there and then use the RG-6 cable that's already been pre wired to rooms in the house to connect the receivers to?

See my thinking is if it's possible to connect 1 coax from the dish to an outlet in a room that leads to the centrally located closet, and in that closet use a splitter to duplicate that signal (I think a spillter can work in this case if it's only 1 LNB right?) into a 2x4 multiswitch and then connect the cables going into the rooms to the output of that multiswitch

Thanks in advance for some hopeful feedback

 

[Newshawk]

It's too bad the D* FAQ pages seem to be gone forever... there was an excellent post on multiswitches there, if I do say so myself...

However, to answer your question, the answer is no, you cannot run just one line from the dish and split it to feed a multiswitch. The receivers send a DC voltage to the LNB(s) to switch from the odd transponders to the even transponders, so a minimum of two cables are needed.

 

[BFG]

oh ok. I was afraid that's what it was. The splitters are really only ever used in satellites I guess to duplicate the same volatage for whatever purpose.

 

[lostlife]

splitters generally don't pass power.

 

[HCI]

BFG you are right about the duplication of the same voltage if you had to use a splitter"needs to be dual power passing" in a D* install. You would have to use the same split line for the 13v or 18v before you went into a switch. This is so you can have for example 1 18"dish and 2 3x8 multiswitches with 16 ports to run receivers. You will need to have 2 lines into the central location to make any multi receiver system work correctly.

 

[woodybeetle]

guys, you can do this, sonora sells a "stacker 125.00 and a Destacker 63.00" that will put both the 13 and 18 on the same line, we use them all the time with condos, 2 lines from dish into stacker into 1 line to panel into destacker to 2 lines to 3X4 switch done deal