Dish ViP 622 and MCE/TV2 Splitting question...

[seriochka]

Friends,

I'm hoping you can answer a question for me .... or at least, help clear up the confusion I'm having right now. My setup is:

* ViP 622 receiver in living room, hooked into home theater (to DVI/HDMI on TV). Audio via Toslink Optical into Stereo Receiver.

* Signal coming in from Dish (coax) split going into TV1 & TV2, taking TV2 out via Composite Video to TV to allow "picture in picture" on my TV rather than via the 622 movable screen.

* Two Dish 500 Receivers installed to provide basic, HD and International channels. A DSP44 switch is mounted/grounded inside my home.

What I'd like to do is hook up my Media Center PC in the living room and split the coax signal in such a way to feed it into the TV tuner card in my PC. (which only has a coax input) I know you can't split (or I've been told rather) this signal like you would a regular cable coax signal.

I've tried buying a supposed "Satellite" splitter from Radio Shack, and tried splitting the signal before it hooks into the Dish receiver and also before it's "split" into the TV1 and TV2 coax inputs on the 622. To date, I have not been able to get my Media Center to see ANY signal coming from the coax.

I guess my question is: Is there a way to do this? Would I need to run a completely separate coax run from the DSP44 to the PC to get a signal? Is there some other component or process to make this work that I haven't tried yet?

Any assistance that could be provided would be most appreciated.

-Steve

 

[Brew]

The signal coming from the DP44 into the receiver is an encrypted satellite feed and you can't use that anyways. What you have to do is either get another receiver and direct the output from that to your pc, or you will have to use either TV1 or TV2 coax output from the 622 to driver your PC

 

[seriochka]

Thanks for the info. The problem is....I have no coax "Output" coming from the 622, just a TV1 and TV2 satellite inputs. There is a "home distribution" coax output on the 622, but when I ran a coax feed from that to the PC card, I still got nothing in terms of signal from the MCE/PC setup.

In looking through other threads, I noticed someone put a link to Dish's cabling diagrams on this site. A number of which seem to indicate that you can "split" the signal to use on other devices (like the PC) with the help of a diplexer. One would be needed at both ends (at the DP 44 and "receiver" end), but that using one would allow such a split to occur.

The link is below:

http://tech.dishnetwork.com/departmental_content/TechPortal/content/tech/receiver/622.shtml

Go to Install | Images and Wiring Setups .... then look at the entries for DP44 w/Diplexers...there are a few.

-Steve

 

[garys]

Check the info screen as to what the frequency is being output from the 622, it can be changed to make it compatable to the input needed for your pc.

 

[Brew]

The diplexer allows you to run satellite and "regular" signals on the same run of cable. It is used when you only have one run of cable to the 622 and you need to send the output to tv2 back out that same run. You still need a source for the the signal, and on the 622 thats going to be that home distribution output. That will have whatever you are showing on TV2 as it's output. Like garys says, you can change what channel it is outputting out in the setup screens on the 622. I believe by default that is channel 60. What you are not going to get is a signal to the PC that you can change channels on the PC and tune in all your channels. You will have to tune the PC to one channel and leave it, and then change channels on the 622.

 

[seriochka]

OK, I think I understand. But how do I get the Media Center PC to recognize the output from that Channel when first doing the setup? I tried it as its defaults, which sets the channel to "60" but the output type is "Air", that didn't see a signal. I also tried it as "Cable" as a type....which the channel is anywhere from 73 to 125, that also didn't work.

In addition, I tried selecting "cable" instead of satellite as the signal type with the above options, that didn't seem to make any difference.

-Steve

 

[Brew]

That I don't know as I've never run MCE. My current setup is a 625 going to a linux box running MythTV. In mine I just tuned the tv card to channel 60 and it popped up. Getting a picture was the easy part. Configuring the infrared so I could change channels when I wanted to was the hard part.