Need some Advice

[DetFan]

Hey all, I am visiting family in Alabama, and since I was here last they had Dish installed. Well, they seem to have to reboot, and restart constantly, and they started telling me how they have two DVRs and can watch those on eight TV's.

Well that did not make sense to me, so after going through the house this is what they have have..

Two DVRs. the NON HD ones..8 TV's, and here is where the fun begins. they have 4 that work right when the system is not locking up, but the other ones have to watch what other TV's are watching. I checked for a switch and there is NOT ONE, just some splitters, and it appears they used the old cable wire in the house as well...

Now I had her call them out because I am here all week and they will be here on the Thursday. What exactly should I be asking for, I mean I ano expert but should there not be a switch running these DVR's? Should there not be some plain jane boxes on some of these tv's??

I just want to know what to ask for when they are here, this pisses me off that there are people here that really dont understand this, and paying for crap that does not work..


Any help on what I should be getting would be appreciated, I just know what is here is not hooked up right, and that 8 TV's will not work on this set up.

Thanks

 

[mritt75]

OK, there setup sounds fine to me, other than the receiver that is locking up. New Dish standard installations are for 4 rooms. That means that any four tvs can watch anything that they want. All other tvs are tied into one of these other four rooms. You say that they have two DVR's. The DVR is a dual tuner DVR. That means one box controlls two different tvs, ie two dvrs controlls 4 tvs, hence a standard 4 room setup. Now, as far as needing a switch, Dish does not need one, you are thinking of Direct. Depending on the dish, with just SD DVR's I am assuming a Dish500, the lnb has a built in switch, it can control 2 dual tuner receivers. As far as using existing cabling, why not. It is already run to the other tvs. As long as there is rg6 cable running direct from the dish to the receivers, you can use existing cabling for the feedbacks. If the original installer did not charge your relatives for hooking the other tvs up, they are fortunate. He did not have to do that. That's why it says standard 4 room installation

 

[WiCkeDuDe]

It is hooked up correctly. If the existing cable was RG6 there was no reason to replace it. The only issue you may have is the rebooting issue. If this is constant it sounds like you have a defective receiver that should be swapped out.

 

[DetFan]

Yes i know what a dual tuner is. Just looks like a rotten lazy install to me. The cables are laying on the ground in the closet> wonder if they would let me have some boxes and install them myself?