new to dish have a few questions

[87hardbody]

Hello, a little background first than my questions, I recently ordered Dish Network service and been getting the run around, first I ordered a SD/DVR receiver and a SD/dual tuner receiver and scheduled the installation, later that day I changed the order to a HD/DVR and the same SD/dual tuner receiver receiver, I was told everything was ok, later when I went to pay the $50 they wanted up front they told me what I wanted was unavailable and that the second receiver had to be a HD/dual tuner receiver even though it wouldn't be running to a HD tv, after numerous phone calls and the installer coming out the next day with the original order equipment and being told by the installer to call to reschedule but no matter what day they told me he would come back tomorrow with the 2nd receiver I wanted ( he didn't show up at all the following day), anyway he told us he could install the HD/DVR receiver to my HD tv and the SD receiver to my 3rd and 4th tv using 1 satellite. Now today a different installer came out ( again with the wrong 2nd receiver) and he is telling us we need 2 satellite dishes in order to receive HD because HD and SD are on different oribitals or something, different angles??

Is it true I need 2 dishes to receive HD even if I'm only using 1 HD receiver and 1 SD receiver? I don't mind having 2 dishes but not if I only need one.

We also are keeping cable, first the installer told us there was no way to hook up both Dish and cable than called a more experienced installer who told him there was a way to do it, can this be done? I figured I could hook the cable to the coax input on my HD tv and rung the dish thru the DVI input or even the S video input switching between them depending on whether I wanted to watch dish or cable. The reason we keep cable is due to the number of tv's we have and the bad weather that always causes the signal to be lost, we are in Florida.

the 2 receivers I'm supposed to be getting are the HD/DVR 722 and the 322

Can anyone please help clarify this for a new guy? Thanks

 

[chainblu]

What city are you near? Some parts of FL are set up for Eastern Arc (one dish) while other parts still require two dishes for HD.

 

[87hardbody]

We live just North of Orlando about 20 miles or so

 

[chainblu]

Orlando is an Eastern Arc DMA, which explains why they want you to have the 2nd HD/dual tuner (the 222). The 322 will not work with the Eastern Arc dish (1000.4)

A 222 will work with a SD TV and when/if you decide to upgrade that TV to HD, the HD receiver will already be in place. (and no upgrade fee)

As far as keeping cable, yes it can be done but they will almost certainly have to run more cables to the rooms where you want to have access to cable TV, but without knowing how your house is wired it's hard to say for sure.

 

[87hardbody]

ok, everything is installed and up and running. When I got home from work I checked everything out, We live in a mobile home by the way. I looked under the trailer and was shocked!!, the first thing I see are about 8- 2 way splitters! I previously had direct tv and had 2 coax cables running from my old dish to under the trailer where my old multiswich was, the installer used my old coax cables, so I followed them to a ground block (not even connected to a ground!!), than I kept following the 2 cables from the dish but I can't the cables split so many times I'm lost.

I had a crappy picture on both of my "tv2"'s but my neighbors son fixed that by changing the channel that the 2nd tv was on, (both second tv's were on ch.80) we changed one to ch.73 and the pictures are perfect now.

 

[87hardbody]

here is the layout of our home:
bedroom 1 - cable & sat (sd receiver- tv1)
bedroom 2 - cable only
bedroom 3 - cable only
bedroom 4 - sat. & cable (tv2 off of HD/DVR receiver)
kitchen - cable only
livingroom - sat & cable (HD tv - HD/DVR receiver tv1)
screen room - cable & sat - (tv2 off of sd receiver)

cable only rooms (3) are fed from cable in going thru a 9 way splitter than a single cable goes to each of the tv's these are all fine

sat & cable rooms:
Living room: sat receiver connected thru component inputs but I may pick up a HDMI to DVI cable (tv has no HDMI input) audio from receiver into tv thru rca cable.

bedroom 4: single coax cable coming into tv from "tv2 off of HD/DVR receiver) how cable is inserted don't know (thru 1 of the 8 splitters perhaps)

bedroom 1: sd receiver 1 coax cable comes in thru floor to a 2 way splitter, 1 cable from splitter goes to sat in on receiver, the other goes to another 2 way splitter, one cable from this splitter goes to sat in 2, the other goes to the tvs out on the receiver, I guess this is how they normally hook up the receiver??
2nd cable coming thru floor is cable only and goes to receivers "cable in" than out to tv.

screen room: single cable coming in to tv from sd receiver as "tv2"

 

[TNGTony]

Your old DirecTV set-up had 1 satellite location. Dish's HD set-up has three orbital locations.

(see EKB: Dish Network Channel Chart (Unofficial) to see which channels are coming from which location)

Right there you have triple the number of cables from the satellite dishes. The go to a multi-switch to your satellite receivers. (So far 5 cables minimum)

From there you have your TV 2 out from each receiver which is probably run back to a diplexer which combines the signal with your cable to run back to TV2. The Diplexers (combiners/splitters) at each receiver and each TV 2 look like regular splitters if you don't look too closely. That's 9 cables there.

There is a 1 dish solution for HD in Central Florida, but it does require the new Eastern Arc service which is 100% MPEG-4. This means that only the new MPEG-4 capable receivers can be used with this service. So if you insisted on paying less and getting an older model receiver, this is why you needed two dishes. One for the regular MPEG2 service at 110°/119° and one for HD at 61.5°.

BTW the new MPEG 4 service (Eastern Arc) would have one dish receiving 61.5°/72.7°/77° and though 99% of what most of us want is at Eastern Arc now, there's a lot of stuff that's not there yet, such as Dish Latino channels.

See ya
Tony

 

[87hardbody]

they did install 2 dishes, one is pointing kinda south (same way the direct tv one was pointed) the 2nd dish is the opposite way, my neighbors son told me the second dish is the HD dish and it has 1 cable coming out of it,

Is the HD dish cable supposed to run back to the other dish? there is 1 cable coming from the HD dish and than 2 coming out of the other dish

there is no multiswitch just splitters, I also read in the receiver manual that they are not supposed to use old cable tv or direct tv coax, which was done here, how much does that matter?

forgot, HD/DVR receiver is 722, Sd receiver is a 322

 

[TNGTony]

There HAS to be a switch otherwise it wouldn't work. A switch does just what is sounds like it does. When you tune in a channel on the receiver, the receiver knows which satellite and transponder the channel is on and commands the switch to select the proper LNB (Dish) and polarity.

The one cable from the dish pointing southeast (61.5° HD programming mostily, other stuff there too) combines with the two cables with the dish pointing southwest (110°/119°). (It could be integrated with the LNB on the 110°/119° dish. From the switch, one or even two cables run to each receiver so the receiver can "see" the satellites.

The receivers have to feed your TV2s as well. So there is cable that runs from each receiver to each of their respective TV2s. These cables running to TV2 COULD be combined with your regular cableTV cable using things that LOOK like splitters, but are actually diplexers. These combine and then split the signals in such a way that they do not interfere with the cable channels like a standard splitter would.

See ya
Tony

 

[hyperguy]

Sounds like you have a DPP lnb that has a in port so the one dish is picking up 110/119 and the other is picking up 61.5 that dish feeds into the other dish and the DPP lnb acts like the switch and combines 110/119/61.5 to one line.

 

[87hardbody]

I don't have any "switch" that's the same as a multiswitch correct? either way I don't have one. Like I said there is 1 cable coming from the HD dish that runs to the SD dish ( I dug it up and followed it), from the SD dish there are 2 cables that come out thru the wall of my shed, (the same 2 that were used for my direct tv), the installer didn't even go in the shed so I know he didn't do anything in there, from the dish the 2 cables (1 white 1 black) go under my trailer to a ground block (with no ground), from there the 2 cables go to a bunch of diplexers.

 

[TNGTony]

Okay so your multi-switch is part of the LNB housing on the 110°/119° dish. As I said, there HAS to be a multi-switch somewhere. In your case it's in the LNB housing (DPP Twin)
http://www.dishretailer.com/ts2003/3/MVC-025S.JPG
http://www.dishuser.org/switch-legacy.php
http://www.dishuser.org/twin.php

 

[87hardbody]

"Sounds like you have a DPP lnb"

I'm very new to Dish I don't know what this is

 

[87hardbody]

that's probably what I have than, thanks for all the info so far, I'll have more questions I'm sure, hope you all can put up with me.