Hi everyone. New here; found your forum by searching on feeding multiple satellite receivers from one cable; so thanks are in order before I bug you with additional questions.
So far I believe I understand the usual situation that a dual LNB dish with outputs for 2 receivers actually has a built-in multiswitch, so either receiver can 'pick' which half of the signals it wants to receive to then decode one 'channel'. A stacker takes both of these inputs and forces the LNB state so it can 'stack' one channel half on top of the other, transmit both along a single cable to be 'destacked', then the 'destacker' provides 2 outputs, either of which can be either signal half upon demand, to plug in 2 receivers. The two receivers never know they're selecting channel halves from the destacker and not from the LNBs. Am I golden so far?
Now the next issue is if you upgrade to an elliptical dish to receive both standard-def and high-def signals from two satellites, each of which has its own signals polarization muxed. The dish output has four ports, each of which could be plugged independently into a receiver. I still can only get ONE cable into the desired viewing location, but want to have one SD and one HD-capable receiver plugged in. Can I still use the same stacker/destacker arrangement? Do you now need somehow *4* inputs, stacked, then destacked to 2 outputs?
As I understand it, DirecTV uses a tone to pick satellites, and a control voltage to pick channel 'halves' per satellite. I can see how the stacker would supply the requested output based on the control voltage received, but I don't know if anyone makes one that also works with the satellite tone selection. Since the tone is a low-frequency I assume its just passed by the stacker and destacker so would that mean if one sends the 'tone' requesting the HD satellite, both receivers are stuck picking among those channels?
Pardon the obvious ignorance here...my brain is hurting.
RTRski
So far I believe I understand the usual situation that a dual LNB dish with outputs for 2 receivers actually has a built-in multiswitch, so either receiver can 'pick' which half of the signals it wants to receive to then decode one 'channel'. A stacker takes both of these inputs and forces the LNB state so it can 'stack' one channel half on top of the other, transmit both along a single cable to be 'destacked', then the 'destacker' provides 2 outputs, either of which can be either signal half upon demand, to plug in 2 receivers. The two receivers never know they're selecting channel halves from the destacker and not from the LNBs. Am I golden so far?
Now the next issue is if you upgrade to an elliptical dish to receive both standard-def and high-def signals from two satellites, each of which has its own signals polarization muxed. The dish output has four ports, each of which could be plugged independently into a receiver. I still can only get ONE cable into the desired viewing location, but want to have one SD and one HD-capable receiver plugged in. Can I still use the same stacker/destacker arrangement? Do you now need somehow *4* inputs, stacked, then destacked to 2 outputs?
As I understand it, DirecTV uses a tone to pick satellites, and a control voltage to pick channel 'halves' per satellite. I can see how the stacker would supply the requested output based on the control voltage received, but I don't know if anyone makes one that also works with the satellite tone selection. Since the tone is a low-frequency I assume its just passed by the stacker and destacker so would that mean if one sends the 'tone' requesting the HD satellite, both receivers are stuck picking among those channels?
Pardon the obvious ignorance here...my brain is hurting.
RTRski
