Hopper/sling and OTA

[dennisinsc]

Have been reading vrkeller's thread about OTA tuner with interest.

I am working with DIRT's Mary to upgrade from 622 to Hopper w/sling. The OTA tuners in our 622 and 211K are definitely weaker than our tv tuners. We get more stations and better signal strength with the tv tuners.

Our dish and OTA antenna are both mounted on the same 4" post we used to use for our big dish 100'+ from the house which is surrounded by 80-90' oaks. Signal is combined with a diplexer to one coax into house and then split back out with another diplexer.

Since I'm not up on the Hopper/Joey technology, can we still combine signals as we do now? Expect to order an OTA tuner after installation as we lose signal in any heavy rain and I want access to local news.

 

[harshness]

Diplexing in OTA up to the node is probably doable. Downstream from the node, there should be a dedicated cable for OTA.

 

[dennisinsc]

Diplexing in OTA up to the node is probably doable. Downstream from the node, there should be a dedicated cable for OTA.

Well contractor came today in snow to do install. Says node has to go on pole and therefore no OTA cause we only have one cable to house. Told him no thanks, to just send me a replacement for the 622 which is dying.

By the way can I use a 500 for a wing dish? Can't get locals HD on WA, wing will have to be 70'+ out away from trees.

 

[larrykenney]

Dennisinsc... If you do decide to get the Hopper and purchase the OTA dongle, you'll find it will probably be BETTER than your TV tuner. Mine will pull in stations that neither of my TV tuners will. Where the TV tuners show no signal, the Dish OTA receiver seems to be able to pull the signal out of the noise or multipath and produce a picture. It's amazed me on how well it works!

Larry
SF

 

[lucky86]

Well contractor came today in snow to do install. Says node has to go on pole and therefore no OTA cause we only have one cable to house. Told him no thanks, to just send me a replacement for the 622 which is dying.

By the way can I use a 500 for a wing dish? Can't get locals HD on WA, wing will have to be 70'+ out away from trees.

I had my OTA in my house and pick up channels just fine. My antenna is just a coax with one end stripped to the copper and I pick up all the OTA channels in Denver with no problem.

 

[adamtmiller]

I just upgraded to HWS +3 Joeys on Sunday. I had an OTA line coming from the attic (it used to be a cable outlet in my son's room but I pulled it up from the wall) and combined it on the outside of my house w/ the satellite line into the Hopper (I believe this was the "Host" on the node). At the Hopper in my living room I used a diplexer to split the signal. Then the satellite signal was spliced. Feed one splice to the Hopper and the other splice to my office TV on the other side of the living room wall. The OTA signal fed through the dongle and worked fine. However (and excuse the lack of technical terms) when the Hopper tried to send the signal back through the combined line to the node to feed the other two Joeys upstairs, the signal was jumbled. The two upstairs Joeys wouldn't decipher the satellite signal by itself. My tech was awesome to work with. I was surprised but he had never seen anyone use the OTA tuner on any equipment so he was very interested in trying to make things work for me. I probably wasted 45 minutes of his time. I may move the OTA line so it feeds our master bedroom independently and move the Hopper there. If you have only two TV's in close proximity, it can be done.

 

[harshness]

Joeys don't "see" a satellite signal. They're looking for a MoCA signal that resides near the top of the broadcast TV band. It is the overlap of the MoCA and OTA bands that makes diplexing a Hopper setup something that you really don't want to visit (unless you really know what you're doing). Fortunately, most of the TV stations are gone from the MoCA frequencies (not true of DECA frequencies) so it may work for now but there's a pretty good chance that some other type of radio service will take over the MoCA frequencies at some point and your MoCA networking will be trashed.