Dual C and dual Ku on one dish – how?

[JohnW]

I’ll try to keep this as short as I can I’ve been getting in to FTA and satellite in general with a small Ku dish. I want to experiment more! I plan to set up a 6 foot motorized prime focus dish once the weather gets a little warmer. I would like for this dish to receive both C and Ku. But, the real troublesome thing is, I would like the ability to hook 2 receivers to it.

So from what I understand, I need a “dual C and dual Ku” setup. I’ve tried to figure out how to do this, but the only thing I’ve found is really expensive so I’m wondering if I’m doing this wrong. It seems like I need a feedhorn that has 2 C outputs and 2 Ku outputs (like the Chaparral Bullseye II). Then I’d put a LNB on each of the 4 outputs and use DiSEqC to select the right LNB. This setup seems overly complicated though.

I’m intending on using this with DVB PCI cards and maybe a VCII receiver if I get the setup working smoothly.

So, is there a better way of doing this? I’d really like to have a simpler setup that uses 13V/18V switching like most LNBFs do but couldn’t find anything that would work. Thanks for any ideas!

 

[drhydro]

The only way I know how to do this is with an orthomode feedhorn such as the chapperal that you mention. Limitations to this type of setup is that you can only watch one satellite at a time, so both recievers are limited to channels on that satellite. Also buying all the LNBs gets kind of pricey.....

 

[voomvoom]

Somebody makes a dual C-band lnbf, I think I saw it at SatelliteAV (above Goldsponser). Only problem is you then would not have ku with it. Here it is:
http://www.satelliteav.com/shop/item/LN-GEO+C2
You could maybe modify the feedhorn, by cutting out a large enough hole to place a ku lnbf inside the scaler rings. PSB did this modification and there are pictures somewhere in this site. Good Luck with whatever you decide on!

Al

 

[MaineNY]

Been there, done that - not a great idea, but it does work. It's nice sometimes if you happen to want to watch an analog C and a FTA DVB on the same satellite, but it rarely works out that way. Most DVB need a DiSeqC switch to change between C/Ku, and you need to figure out which receiver will control the dish, then make sure the dish is in the right place if you're trying to watch something on the other receiver. I decided to go to the 30" motorized Ku dish for DVB so that C-band analog RX could move the big dish independent of the FTA. I move C-BUD to satellite and xponder for DVB if I'm trying to watch something on that, but there's a lot of DVB/FTA on Ku on 30" dish.

 

[truckracer]

small headends

The Ortho setup you are describing I have mostly seen in small headends in hotels where they would have a couple of big C-band dishes where they would use 4DTV type DSR-410's on a rack where they needed to receive both Horizontal and Vertical signals from the same satellite at the same time such as on C3 to offer more channels to the hotel room tv's.

They would then have splitters with one power passing port or some type of big multi-switch so the appropriate polarity could be chosen by each receiver whether it be swaping a coax jumper to either the "horizontal" splitter or the "Vertical splitter".

and then on the KU band side of satellite X4 with another same situation.

I don't see how this would be very beneficial at home since you could probably just add another dish if you wanted to watch a different program in another room with another receiver.

This way you could even be on a different satellite.

Here at home I have two C-band dishes on two different 4DTV receivers.
Have some ala carte's on one and the absolute digital pack on the other.