Coming back to Dish... Help me answer a few questions.

[HeavyC]

I'm thinking about coming back to Dish Network since my local cable company really can't seem to figure out HD at all. I'm currently trying to figure out the best way to do this.

I know I'll be getting the VIP622 for my HD Projector in the Home Theater. That's where we do all of our HD viewing.

I have a few other small HDTV's in the house, but it's not critical that I deliver them an HD Source. I think one 625 would be sufficient to drive the rest of the TV's in my home. There are only 3 of us in the house, and the newborn is too young to watch TV.

I found this product, and it looks really interesting.

http://www.vidiociti.com/tv-spider-kit.aspx

We previously had Dish Network years ago, and have a separate run of RG6 cables separate from the house's internal coax wiring for cable. The idea would be to share the 625 and it's DVR capabilities with the rest of the house (excluding the Home Theater), using our existing cable wiring. I would just set the TV2 output of the 625 to feed the TV Spider. Theoretically, I could then have one person watching something on TV1 in the room with the 625, and then one other person on a TV elsewhere in the house watching something on the TV2 output. In both cases, they'd have access to any stored content on the DVR.

My thinking would be, I could just use a UHF remote at each of the other TV locations to control the 625. So here come my questions:

1. Can anyone see a flaw in my plan to use the video distribution system...is there a better product?

2. Is there a limit on how many UHF remotes I can use? For example, if I have the bedroom, exercise room, and office all hooked up to the TV2 output of the 625, is there any reason all 3 rooms can't have their own UHF remote?

3. What is the range on the UHF remotes? Can they easily go between floors? It's not a large house, the maximum distance they'd have to travel would be well under 50 feet in a straight line between walls and floors.

Thanks in advance.

 

[caam1]

You don't need an external modulator unless you want to distribute an additional source such as a DVD player, etc. The 622 has built-in stereo modulators for both TV1 and TV2. The 625 has a built in modulator for TV2.

I have two 622s and I combined the RF output from both of them. I set one to OTA channels 60 and 62, and the other one to channels 64 and 66. I send these four channels and the signal from an OTA antenna through a distribution amplifier to eight TVs located in various rooms. I just used a plain VHF/UHF RF amplifier and passive splitters to distribute the signal.

The RF remotes should work fine at 50 feet. I did have to extend the remote antenna on one of my 622s above my equipment rack to get it to work right. You can use as many RF remotes as you want as long as you set them for the same address. The TV2 remotes that come with the 622 can be programmed to operate a second receiver by IR. This allows me to control both TV1 and TV2 on each 622 with just one remote. In the bedrooms I use some RF remotes left over from 811s that I had to control TV2 on the 622s.