HomeZone

[theandrew]

I am getting the HomeZone installed this friday. I plan on using the coax-output to backfeed into other TV's in my house. I know it comes with a splitter thing so that I can combine the 2 lines from the dish into 1, run it through my house, and split it back out. But to back feed for the other TV's, do I need another line of coax?

I have 1 rg6 cable running from the attic to the TV in the living room, I only want to have 1 wire total running through the house (too much work to run another). I was thinking of putting a splitter on both ends and trying to combine the coax output signal from the homezone onto the same coax line, but i am not sure if it would even work, or if they would interfere....

Any ideas? Is this possible?

BTW, Love the site!

 

[Liquidforce88]

Yes they can do what you want with a diplexor. As long as you have a line in the attic to the 2nd tv.

 

[theandrew]

Thats what I was hoping, but the problem that I thought would happen is that the satellite signal is traveling the opposite direction than the broadcasted signal. Is there different ends to a diplexer? Like a combiner and a seperater??? Or are they the same...

 

[rcdallas]

Diplexers are just like two-way splitters/combiners pretty much. They can flow in different directions.

Attached is image of diplexer.

 

[ranger714]

yup... i have the same config with my system at home...


well, a little different, as my OTA seems to cause fuzzy TV2 reception if sharing the same cable, but i have two lines going into my theater room, one just for OTA, the other diplexed for satellite into my HZR and to take TV2 back outside.

Outside I have another diplexor to split the incoming satellite signal and the TV2 cable that goes into the master bedroom.

don't forget the cool splitter trick to extend the reach of your TV2 radio remote (if needed). I needed to do it at my old house (master bedroom was across the house from TV room). Simply take a regular coax splitter and connect it to the TV2 output of your HZR and to the RF Antenna connection. then use another splitter where your TV2 cable comes into your 2nd room and connect one side of the splitter to your TV and connect the RF antenna to the 2nd output of the splitter.

 

[Liquidforce88]

I diplexor does not care what direction the signal is going. All it cares is low band and high band.

 

[TrueDis]

Any thoughts on the Homezone from anyone who has it?

 

[technikal]

Any thoughts on the Homezone from anyone who has it?

I had it installed about a week ago. I'm coming from several years on a DirectTivo. My thoughts:

Pros:
- Excellent integration. The Launchcast Music channels, ability to store mp3's and photos on the box and the web remote are all very cool and will see a lot of use. The Movielink stuff works well, but the selection of titles isn't great. Akimbo isn't active yet so far as I can tell.

- Stability - I'd heard horror stories about Dish DVRs and was worried about this product. So far, it's been perfect. No lockups, nothing acting funky.

- Nice Features - networking, USB, photos, music, 30 second skip, etc - all active out of the box. No need to hack to enable these like I had to do with DirectTivo. The remote is awesome.

Cons:
- No HD. I didn't have an HD TV when I ordered this service, but my trusty old TV died before the install and was replaced with a HDTV. Picture quality of SD on HD isn't good. I'd like to see them come out with the HD version soon.

- Usability/Interface : it's not as good as Tivo. Searches in the guide look at both the title and the description, so searching for shows with common word titles like 'House' or 'Office' result in tons of hits and I can't find the episode I want to record. There are no 'folders' to store multiple versions of the same show in 'My Recordings' so you have to scroll through tons of crap to find what you're looking for. No 'wishlists' or ways to record based on subject content - you have to pick a specific show. No way to sort My Recording by title. Color scheme and graphics used are a bit lame. Setting up a 'season pass' is not intuitve.

- Web Remote doesn't allow you to listen to music stored on the box, even though it says it will. Maybe a feature they plan to add?

- Picture Quality - PQ of my locals suck. I imagine that's more of a function of Dish than the box - but they're horrid.


I'd also like to see the ability to load my own videos to the box for play back. It would be neat to take the SD card from my camera and watch videos on the TV without having to mess around with anything else.

So, overall, it's cool, it works well and I like it. With a few tweaks, they have the potential to have an absolutely awesome box.

 

[TrueDis]

Cons:
- No HD. I didn't have an HD TV when I ordered this service, but my trusty old TV died before the install and was replaced with a HDTV. Picture quality of SD on HD isn't good. I'd like to see them come out with the HD version soon.

technikal, thanks for the review! For some reason I thought this box did have HD support. If it doesn't, that's definitely a dealbreaker for me.

 

[technikal]

Yep - all the initial talk and photos of the box were showing HD. However, the shipping product is SD. The rep I spoke to said they were working on HD, but didn't have an ETA. It would have to be a hardware change as well as the box that's shipping does not have OTA input or HDMI output.

 

[rcdallas]

Yep - all the initial talk and photos of the box were showing HD. However, the shipping product is SD. The rep I spoke to said they were working on HD, but didn't have an ETA. It would have to be a hardware change as well as the box that's shipping does not have OTA input or HDMI output.

In the Detroit Market this is why 1000 Plus dishes are being installed on HomeZone because it will be HD in the future.

 

[jakethecat]

Any thoughts on the Homezone from anyone who has it?

It is super groovy, my favorite feature is the abilty to schedule recordings & movie downloads remotley. The lauchcast music is also a big plus. Further, the DVR is far superior to my old scientific atlanta.

 

[MikeD-C05]

How is the video quality of the videos downloaded from the internet with homezone?

 

[ranger714]

How is the video quality of the videos downloaded from the internet with homezone?

Depends on the quality of the source material... some are excellent, near-DVD quality (like a good DIVX rip), some are less so, but again, it depends on how well the original encoding was done.