Backfeeding through cable

[jseabolt]

Hello. This is my first posting. This has probably been done/covered before but I'll go ahead and ask it.

My house is wired for cable TV but I'm wanting to swap over to satellite. I'm not real sure which service to go with at the moment but I already have a Direct TV dish and cable already installed (I subscribed it at one time). I seem to like the choice of channels they offer over Dish network.

I've got 5 TVs in my house and 1 in a detached garage.

Here's what I want to do. Place one receiver in my den which is where the cabel from the dish is located. Once the cabel company disconnects me from the pole, I'm thinking it would work if I ran a spliter coming out of the receiver and backfeed the signal through the cabel TV wiring that Charter installed. Of course I will need about 5 UHF remotes and might have to connect a power booster after the splitter since I'll be feeding four other TVs off the receiver.

Does that make sense?

My wife and I watch the same thing on TV so it's no big deal.

For my garage I want to get a second receiver but connect that to a second dish. I already have another Direct TV dish I picked up at a flea market.

I hope this doesn't sound like I'm hacking or anything but the plan is to just get two receivers and act like I'm placing the second one in my bedroom but instead connect that to a second dish at my garage.

Is this possible? Any drawbacks other than signal lose?

 

[KE4EST]

to SatelliteGuys!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[nhulst]

First answer: Driving all your TVs from the RF out of one receiver will work fine. If you don't already own an RF amplifier, I would try it as-is first and make your judgment on picture quality before you run out any buy one. You won't hurt the receiver. I'm assuming that the coax from the DirecTV dish you spoke of is separate from your cable TV coax. I'm not aware of any way to share both signals on the same coax. (More experienced folks, jump in anytime if I'm wrong here.)

Be aware that the HD receivers may not have an RF output--the HR21 certainly does not (it is sitting in my den right now )

As for the second receiver in the garage, you would pay the $4.99 a month for a second receiver on your account. Assuming the detached garage is on the same lot as your house, I cannot imagine any reason why this would be a problem. I have a fresh copy of the Customer Agreement and I can't see anyplace where this is spelled out. Their main point of emphasis is that they want all the receivers hooked up to phone lines. Note, whether the second receiver is hooked up to the same dish or a different dish is immaterial.

Hope this helps!

 

[Joe Diamond]

You may want to look at "remote extenders". They run about thirty bucks and will allow you to change the channels on your receivers from other spots in the building. This saves trying to train the dog to change channels.


Joe