Ok, we currently have DirecTv in 2 rooms without any recording or anything. We want to upgrade to digital video recording (DVR?) so instead of spending $300-$500 to upgrade our DirecTv system to TiVo, I'm thinking of just signing up with Dish (which would also allow us local channels which we do NOT have with DirecTv yet). I have a couple questions though...
1. When looking at Dish's website under DVR receivers they have Player DVR's (the 510, 522 and 921) and Standard DVR's (the 501/508 and 721)... whats the difference between the 2 categories?
2. When researching TiVo, we were told we had to have 2 cables from the satellite to the receiver for TiVo to work - period. Does the 510 need 2 cables? And if not, I'm guessing you can only record 1 thing at a time? Is the # of cables relevant to the # of recordings you can do at once? So the 522 would require 2 cables from the satellite to be able to record 2 programs at once (1 cable for each tuner)? (I think I answered this question myself but... )
3. My husband wants to know how the cable-out jack works on TV2. And about the macrovision problem... if he hooks that cable up to a VCR is he gonna get macrovision fade-outs (see below for question on configuration idea).
4. We have 4 rooms we want to be able to watch TV in... our bedroom, livingroom, computer room and my daughters room... so now I'm trying to figure out the best way to configure that, which receiver-setup to go with and what new cables we need to run this weekend. Here are the details (I hope they make sense!). The livingroom is above the computer room, daughter's room is above our bedroom and the Dish is located on the wall outside the livingroom near the roof.
Our watching is probably split 50% bedroom, 35% living room, 15% computer room (my daughter just watches in her bedroom in the evenings). Computer room and daughter's room have no sound systems, but our livingroom has a fairly nice surround sound system (and we're replacing our bedroom hand-me-down with a new Zenith home theatre cheapie system). Another thing to consider is all new cable-runs would need to be done outside (our house is about 40 feet long and the standard height on the 2 floors).
We're planning to get the 522/510/301 promotion. So now my configuration questions. Our ideal setup at this point would be:
Replace the current dish with the new one, but leave it in the same location (against the upper wall of the living room).
Put the 522 in our bedroom, the 510 in the computer room and the 301 in our daughters room. Have 2 coax cables from dish to our bedroom, 1 coax from our bedroom into the livingroom, 1 coax from dish to daughters room, and 1 coax from dish to computer room.
TV1 from the 522 would go to the TV in our bedroom, TV2 from the 522 would go through Coax into the VCR in the livingroom (and then from there to the TV and sound system via RCA/AV cables). My husband is concerned we wouldn't be able to get the sound connections into the stereo receiver in the livingroom without doing it this way (advantage is we could watch our recorded stuff from either livingroom or bedroom).
A) If we ran coax from the 522/TV2 in the bedroom to the livingroom and then into a VCR and then from there into the sound system/TV via RCA/AV cables, would we get the good surround sound? How much picture quality would we lose?
B) Would we have to do anything special to run the new coax cables outside? We have one from our existing dish to the living room and from the dish to our bedroom (currently our only 2 TV locations, we want to add the other 2).
C) What exactly would we need to do to be able to use the UHF remote upstairs from the livingroom? Do we have to install some kind of antenna? or ?
Is this going to work? Do we need to run TV2 to somewhere that sound doesn't matter (where just a plain coax connection would work).
Computer room and daughters room seem to be pretty straight forward (any problem with switching the 510 and the 301 around if we wanted to move the DVR capability to her room?), 1 coax cable from the dish into each.
Is there a better solution for configuration? We like the idea of being able to watch recorded stuff on the 522 in either our bedroom or the livingroom but if we can't get the surround sound in both, we can put the 510 in the living room and use TV2 in the computer room or something where we just have a TV.
Anything else we need to be aware of? Loaded question, I know
Any advice would be welcome!!
1. When looking at Dish's website under DVR receivers they have Player DVR's (the 510, 522 and 921) and Standard DVR's (the 501/508 and 721)... whats the difference between the 2 categories?
2. When researching TiVo, we were told we had to have 2 cables from the satellite to the receiver for TiVo to work - period. Does the 510 need 2 cables? And if not, I'm guessing you can only record 1 thing at a time? Is the # of cables relevant to the # of recordings you can do at once? So the 522 would require 2 cables from the satellite to be able to record 2 programs at once (1 cable for each tuner)? (I think I answered this question myself but... )
3. My husband wants to know how the cable-out jack works on TV2. And about the macrovision problem... if he hooks that cable up to a VCR is he gonna get macrovision fade-outs (see below for question on configuration idea).
4. We have 4 rooms we want to be able to watch TV in... our bedroom, livingroom, computer room and my daughters room... so now I'm trying to figure out the best way to configure that, which receiver-setup to go with and what new cables we need to run this weekend. Here are the details (I hope they make sense!). The livingroom is above the computer room, daughter's room is above our bedroom and the Dish is located on the wall outside the livingroom near the roof.
Our watching is probably split 50% bedroom, 35% living room, 15% computer room (my daughter just watches in her bedroom in the evenings). Computer room and daughter's room have no sound systems, but our livingroom has a fairly nice surround sound system (and we're replacing our bedroom hand-me-down with a new Zenith home theatre cheapie system). Another thing to consider is all new cable-runs would need to be done outside (our house is about 40 feet long and the standard height on the 2 floors).
We're planning to get the 522/510/301 promotion. So now my configuration questions. Our ideal setup at this point would be:
Replace the current dish with the new one, but leave it in the same location (against the upper wall of the living room).
Put the 522 in our bedroom, the 510 in the computer room and the 301 in our daughters room. Have 2 coax cables from dish to our bedroom, 1 coax from our bedroom into the livingroom, 1 coax from dish to daughters room, and 1 coax from dish to computer room.
TV1 from the 522 would go to the TV in our bedroom, TV2 from the 522 would go through Coax into the VCR in the livingroom (and then from there to the TV and sound system via RCA/AV cables). My husband is concerned we wouldn't be able to get the sound connections into the stereo receiver in the livingroom without doing it this way (advantage is we could watch our recorded stuff from either livingroom or bedroom).
A) If we ran coax from the 522/TV2 in the bedroom to the livingroom and then into a VCR and then from there into the sound system/TV via RCA/AV cables, would we get the good surround sound? How much picture quality would we lose?
B) Would we have to do anything special to run the new coax cables outside? We have one from our existing dish to the living room and from the dish to our bedroom (currently our only 2 TV locations, we want to add the other 2).
C) What exactly would we need to do to be able to use the UHF remote upstairs from the livingroom? Do we have to install some kind of antenna? or ?
Is this going to work? Do we need to run TV2 to somewhere that sound doesn't matter (where just a plain coax connection would work).
Computer room and daughters room seem to be pretty straight forward (any problem with switching the 510 and the 301 around if we wanted to move the DVR capability to her room?), 1 coax cable from the dish into each.
Is there a better solution for configuration? We like the idea of being able to watch recorded stuff on the 522 in either our bedroom or the livingroom but if we can't get the surround sound in both, we can put the 510 in the living room and use TV2 in the computer room or something where we just have a TV.
Anything else we need to be aware of? Loaded question, I know
Any advice would be welcome!!
