Hooking up my Voom and Echostar dish for HDTV

[mr_snerdly]

I am a former Voom subscriber, and have decided to go back to E* since D* is not making a big push in the HD arena. I need advice in doing this. What I would like to do is connect my old E* 500 dish with my V* dish that is already mounted in the proper position to see the V* bird. My question is, what equipment will I need to do this, switches etc.. I am a novice at this, so any details you can give me will be appreciated. Also, any pitfalls you can warn me about will be appreciated as well.

The next situation is this: I originally wanted to purchase a 942 reciever, but have changed my mind since it won't be MPEG4 compatible. What I would like to do is purchase a standard HD reciever to hold me over, then when E* switches to MPEG4 I will purchase the latest and greatest HD-DVR. My question is: does anyone have any suggestions on what HD reciever I should get. I am looking for something fairly cheap that is reliable.

Thanks everyone for your help!!

 

[dfergie]

The 6000u and 811 are your only non dvrhd choice... only the 811 is currently offered by dish. Depending on the lnb's your Dish 500 has you might only need sw21 switches...

 

[kavula]

the Dish 500 has to have legacy (not DishPro) LNBs.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

I had two standard receivers connected to an old Dish 500. I had two legacy LNBs mounted on the 500, each with two coax outputs. One LNB picked up 110, the other 119. One output from each was then connected into a SW21 switch, combining them into a single coax run back to a receiver. So there were 4 outputs from the LNBs, combined down to 2 coax runs going back to 2 receivers.

From this I wanted to pick up Voom. So I put up a dish pointing at 61.5. I obtained a legacy Twin, which has two LNBs and SW21 switches built into it). There are only two coax runs coming out of the TWIN (instead of 4). I used this to replace the two LNBs on the Dish 500. I then took one of those LNBs and mounted it on my VOOM dish.

Then I took the coax from the VOOM dish and a coax from the 500/TWIN and ran them into one of my SW21 switches. Then I simply connected the same coax coming back to the house that used to carry only the signal from the 500, but now it has both the 500 and the VOOM/61.5 signal. I hooked this into an 811 receiver and I was good to go.

You will need to determine what kind of setup you have on your Dish 500. Dual LNBs, the Quad LNBF (which has 4 outputs), a "legacy" Twin, or a Dishpro Twin.

Perhaps this link could help you:
http://ekb.dbstalk.com/35

 

[dfergie]

I do that when I take my 6000u with me when I go camping Tom... I use my old Dish 500 and an old D* dish... I have dpp44 switch and dplnbs here at the house...

 

[BobaBird]

See the article Adding 61.5. Before being archived on the EKB it was a post with extensive discussion at both major forums.

 

[danielle_s]

the Dish 500 has to have legacy (not DishPro) LNBs.

Dish does have a converter switch that you can use if your receiver and lnbs don't match up.

But I would have to say that it's probably cheaper to just replace your lnbs and it's not that hard.

 

[kavula]

You only need a converter if you use a legacy receiver with DishPro switches and LNBs, not the other way around.

 

[mr_snerdly]

Thanks everyone for your help....especially all of the detail invovled.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

If an 18" dish is sufficient to get a strong signal from the new 129 bird, I plan to just swing the D300 I've got pointing at 61.5 over to point at 129. Wouldn't cost a thing and I wouldn't have to bother with pulling down two dishes and replacing all of the LNBs and switches to use the upcoming D1000 dish.

It would be neat if this holds true. I installed my D300 myself, using only a printed guide and having never done anything like it before way back in 1998. Then they sent me a free D500 upgrade and I pulled down the D300 and installed the D500. Then I bought the legacy Twin and put up my 61.5 dish. So if I can swing the D300 around to 129, I think I'll only have about $75-$100 total, including the fence posts and concrete, into these dishes. The old legacy gear has worked perfect all these years.