Switch question

[iammike]

I'm trying to replace a second receiver that has gone bad at my mother's house. She currently has a 510 in her living room and a very old receiver, the one that went bad in her guest bedroom. I don't have Dish anymore, so I'm going to give her my old 721. This is where the problem comes in. She only has 2 coax runs into the house from her dishes, one dish for 110 and 119 with a legacy twin and one dish for 61.5 with a legacy dual. The current switches are SW-21's.

What I'm trying to accomplish is to put the 721 in her living room and move the 510 to the bedroom without having to run more coax which would be a real PITA. From reading on here, it looks like I can upgrade her lnb's to dish pro models and use a separator to connect the 2 tuners on the 721 with one cable from the dishes and use the other cable for the 510 in the bedroom. First of all is this correct? Second, could someone recommend specific lnb's and switches I should purchase to make this happen? Third, will I have any problems if I temporarily run the 721 with only 1 tuner connected to the dishes?

Thanks,
Mike

 

[garys]

The lnb for 61.5 should be a DP Dual and the one for 110/119 should be a DPP Twin. The line for 61.5 will run to the input on the Twin and the two outputs to the house and the seperator used on the line directly behind the 721. The DPP Twin has it's switch built in, no need for extenal switches.

 

[iammike]

Thanks Gary! I'd pretty much figured that out from reading the info on Dishstore.net's web site, but wasn't 100% sure. The pdf file on the DPP Twin page said the 721 would be supported with a future software release. I think the document was a little out of date though.

Am I safe in assuming the 510 in the bedroom won't have any problems with the DPP lnb's either?

Mike

 

[garys]

No, you do have to do a switch test one the new lnb's are in place. Also, just replace the lnb's do not mess with the dishes themselves. The dishes shouldn't need to be repointed. Hopefully, you will not have any problems with the existing coax lines.

 

[BobaBird]

The 721 finally got DPP Twin support in the L177 update of 9/05.

 

[iammike]

Thanks for the help guys.

Mike

 

[KE4EST]

Let us know what happens.

 

[iammike]

I got Mom set up this weekend. After talking it over, we decided to just turn off the dish in the spare bedroom. There's hardly ever anyone in there watching it. This removed the need for new lnb's and I sent both existing feeds to the 721 in the living room. I send the output from the living room receiver to her kitchen and master bedroom too, so I put in a diplexer to handle the "TV out" and one of the sat inputs on the same wire. It took about and hour for the software to update, the 721 went from L177 to L326. The call do Dish went amazingly smooth. I got an American on the first call and she actually understood what I wanted to do. By dropping the extra receiver ($5/month) and the DVR fee for the 510 ($5.98/month), Mom winds up with a much nicer receiver and saves $10.98/month.

Now if I can just figure out how to teach a 74 year old woman about a two-tuner receiver and how PIP works. It took her about 3 months to figure out the 510, so by end of summer she should be all set. Until then my phone's going to be ringing a lot.

Thanks again to everyone for their help!