I've just received two free Dish 500 dishes, one with a DishPro Quad LNBF (110/119), and the other with a DishPro Dual circular LNBF. I'm thinking about pointing the Quad at 82/91, and the Dual at 129. I've already got an old "legacy" Ku LNBF on an existing dish for NASA TV, which works great with my receiver (a PCI card). I've done a bit of preliminary research and testing and ran into a few problems:
1. The Quad seems to need more current than my receiver can supply. I've heard that the current requirement is for the LNBF as a whole and not each individual output, so I'm thinking of running 19VDC over some old coax to a splitter, and from there to an unused output on each DishPro LNBF. I'll probably need to insert DC-blockers on the "real" outputs to protect my receiver from reverse current flow. Would that plan work, or is a power inserter in my future?
2. I currently have a 4x1 diseqc 2.0 switch between the receiver and the legacy LNBF. I'm almost certain that the Quad won't like being behind that switch, since if I'm not mistaken it already has one internally. Can I cascade my existing switch and each of these new dishes behind a diseqc 1.1 switch?
3. I played around with Nimiq 1 and 2 about three years ago. If I recall, at least one of them was ailing at the time and I couldn't get a bunch of the TPs. I think they had realigned the beam northward to give Canada the last of the remaining power. It looks like some of the FTA channels have gone away since then as well. Is there still some decent FTA on either that I can still get from the L.A. area?
Hopefully the one useful FTA channel on 129 doesn't go away the day that I get the dish up.
I suppose I should just get a good dish, QPH-031, and motor instead, but I guess I enjoy the challenge (and the low cost!)
1. The Quad seems to need more current than my receiver can supply. I've heard that the current requirement is for the LNBF as a whole and not each individual output, so I'm thinking of running 19VDC over some old coax to a splitter, and from there to an unused output on each DishPro LNBF. I'll probably need to insert DC-blockers on the "real" outputs to protect my receiver from reverse current flow. Would that plan work, or is a power inserter in my future?
2. I currently have a 4x1 diseqc 2.0 switch between the receiver and the legacy LNBF. I'm almost certain that the Quad won't like being behind that switch, since if I'm not mistaken it already has one internally. Can I cascade my existing switch and each of these new dishes behind a diseqc 1.1 switch?
3. I played around with Nimiq 1 and 2 about three years ago. If I recall, at least one of them was ailing at the time and I couldn't get a bunch of the TPs. I think they had realigned the beam northward to give Canada the last of the remaining power. It looks like some of the FTA channels have gone away since then as well. Is there still some decent FTA on either that I can still get from the L.A. area?
Hopefully the one useful FTA channel on 129 doesn't go away the day that I get the dish up.
I suppose I should just get a good dish, QPH-031, and motor instead, but I guess I enjoy the challenge (and the low cost!)
