home wiring dish plus comcast

[wilwertjr]

Thanks in advance for any help.
New member, if asked a million times before I apoligize

I have dish network with a dual receiver and basic cable in the house.

I would like to have both dish network (off the 2nd tv option) and cable tv signal run to one tv.

Now I know I could do this with two cable lines and an A/B switch.

But I want to do it with one cable line and no A/B switch. I'm lazy and don't want to have to get up and switch sources

Basically I want to combine both my 2nd tv signal from my dish receiver and cable tv signal into one line and just bring one line to my tv.

I friend of mine who does A/V installations said I could do this with a splitter wired backwards. I tried this and I get reception but some channels end up a little snowy. Wrong splitter?

I emailed dish tech support and they basically said it can't be done.

But I'm stubburn and I gotta believe this is possible.

 

[rcdallas]

It may just depend on the cable system in your area... what channels are in use, seperation between channels, signal levels, etc.

Your signal maybe too hot coming out of the tv2 side, poor man trick could be to get yourself a 4 way splitter and place it on the tv2 line just before the reversed two way splitter to cut your signal level down another -11 db.

 

[wilwertjr]

It may just depend on the cable system in your area... what channels are in use, seperation between channels, signal levels, etc.

Your signal maybe too hot coming out of the tv2 side, poor man trick could be to get yourself a 4 way splitter and place it on the tv2 line just before the reversed two way splitter to cut your signal level down another -11 db.

Interesting idea with the 4 way splitter, will try it.

TV2 is sent out on channel 74, nearest channel for cable I believe is channel 68 and then skips to channel 90. Live in Minnesota and just have basic cable

Don't know what the signal levels are. I am a technical person and can do technical tasks, but I don't know how to test signal levels.

 

[rcdallas]

Try monkeying with that... only way I know to check is with a meter the cable co uses.

If it seems to improve the picture but still not clear enough, maybe add another two-way splitter to it as well, that will likely knock off another -3.5 db. I've heard you can figure -0.5 db for each connection - insertion loss. I forget the ball park figures for cable loss for RG6, could be -6 db for every 100' on like channel 30 or something.

The TV2 home distribution port puts out +17 db.

 

[wilwertjr]

Thank you for your time with this.

The additional splitters only cause additional static on the channels and the picture gets worse.

How about this?
RFDM-1, RFDM1, DIGITAL UHF MODULATOR
It's a modulator.

Could I use this coupled with a HLSJ combiner to feed DBS and cable tv to my MATV.
I chose this one because it has user selectable channel output. Many others that are cheaper are only channel 3/4 output.

The only problem I have with this one is that I cannot discern the connections on the modulator listed above and don't want to order something before knowing if it's going to work.

Another idea....

What if I convert my cable tv source which is "F type" to component with a "F type to component converter" and then run component cable to my tv's.

This, however, defeats the purpose of a single cable installation and now I am running additional cable.

 

[Agonizing Fury]

You may want to try a different cable channel number. 73 is still in the range most cable operators use for their digital channels so you will get a lot of what appears to be noise on that channel (it's really the digital data that your TV cannot interpret). I have done this many times for my customers and have the best luck with the cable channels in the 110s. You can change the modulator setting by pressing Menu 6-1-5. Try 116 or 120 first, those are the ones I have had the best luck with. Good luck, try them all one at a time and you may get lucky.

 

[wilwertjr]

You may want to try a different cable channel number. 73 is still in the range most cable operators use for their digital channels so you will get a lot of what appears to be noise on that channel (it's really the digital data that your TV cannot interpret). I have done this many times for my customers and have the best luck with the cable channels in the 110s. You can change the modulator setting by pressing Menu 6-1-5. Try 116 or 120 first, those are the ones I have had the best luck with. Good luck, try them all one at a time and you may get lucky.

Thanks for the help. Channel 116 was the first one I tried and it worked great.

For anyone interested, I used a splitter backwards to join comcast cable tv and dish network tv2 to a single coax to my tv (thus saving multiple cable runs). Not using any decoder boxes, this goes straight to my 2nd tv. I then had to set my dish receiver to output tv2 to channel 116, which used to be on channel 74.

I use dish for my main programming and comcast for attenna service/internet.
This setup allows me to pick up the free OTA HD programming thru comcast and then route it to my new HDTV and also have dish programming and watch either without the use of an A/B switch.

DO NOT do this for the tv1 connection because that's the connection to the LNB.

Once again, thanks for the help.

 

[Agonizing Fury]

Thanks for the help. Channel 116 was the first one I tried and it worked great.

For anyone interested, I used a splitter backwards to join comcast cable tv and dish network tv2 to a single coax to my tv (thus saving multiple cable runs). Not using any decoder boxes, this goes straight to my 2nd tv. I then had to set my dish receiver to output tv2 to channel 116, which used to be on channel 74.

I use dish for my main programming and comcast for attenna service/internet.
This setup allows me to pick up the free OTA HD programming thru comcast and then route it to my new HDTV and also have dish programming and watch either without the use of an A/B switch.

DO NOT do this for the tv1 connection because that's the connection to the LNB.

Once again, thanks for the help.

Not a problem, I'm glad it all worked out well for you. The same could be accomplished for TV1 as well, but it's a much more complex setup if your TV2 is already diplexed into the single line.

 

[rcdallas]

Hmmm... I just learned something.