MDU Campground - Shift to Digital

[Shellback-X24]

I am the maintenance guy in a large campground where we have a cable system serving 455 RV sites and also 80 cabins/fixed locations with SD TV's. Currently everything is Standard Definition. Line-up is 16 Direct receivers/channels, 4 OTA and 2 in house channels. The current equipment is one Eagle Aspin S-2060 LNB Voltage Controlled switch for the 16 D* receivers of various vintage, mostly Sony SAT-B-1 & B-50's with a few Unidens. Output to the cable head are Pico HB-3 or Blonder Tongue Audio Video Modulators. The in-house channels are a surveillance in the game room for parents to watch their kids and a slide show of news and happenings around the campground.

We are looking ahead to 2009 and trying to find the most economical way to shift to digital, preferably over a period of years.

1. Can we continue to use the D* receivers and SD transmission for a period of time in order to spread out the replacement of the existing 80 TV's?

2. Can we install 4 set top boxes in front of the Modulators for the OTA channels?

3.Can we transmit both SD and DT signals on the existing coax???? I ask this because many guests RV's will have DTV's and want a digital stream during our hoped for transition to DTV, yet many others will still be in the SD world.

I hope that I am asking this question on the right forum. If it needs to move please let me know.

TIA Shellback-X24

 

[branchbouncer]

You may want to see if you can post this in "the Installers Zone"

 

[AntAltMike]

I just added over a dozen broadcast DTV channels to a campground headend. Their analog channels were and are sourced by DirecTV modulated channels plus eight analog broadcast channels and one modulated house channel. Their cable channel plan went up to channel 44.

The campground has .500 hardline and was initially designed for 300 Mhz but was underpowered. I replaced the four BIDA 450s with eight BIDA 750-30s. If you are outfitted to support line-powered line extenders, they would be more suitable for "goosing up" such a distribution system than the BIDAs are, but I was not so outfitted. I also had to replace some of the older, hardline taps that choked off the higher, UHF frequencies.

I developed an off-air headend that combines local broadcast DTV signals from Washington DC, Annapolis and Baltimore, Maryland, and Falls Church, Virginia.

All of the transitional local DTV channel assignments are UHF, but I had to shift Baltimore DTV channels 38 and 40 to VHF channels 3 and 6 respectively for technical reasons that go beyond the scope of this thread. That forced me to move modulated, analog channels 3 and 6 to channels 45 and 46.

On February 17, 2009, the local digital UHF signals that are presently on channels 34, 38, 39 and 59 will move down to broadcast channels 9, 13, 7 and 11, respectively. At that time, we plan to relocate our modulated channels 22, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 23 to other vacant channels as I am reluctant to distribute modulated, analog channels adjacent to any broadcast digital channels. On the other hand, (again, for reasons that go beyond the scope of this thread), I will no longer have to convert any UHF digital channels to 3 and 6 at that time, so I will get to reclaim the VHF lowband for analog distribution.

Most DTV sets allow the user to select the digital tuner channel plan and modulation format separate from the analog source, so most TVs can seamlessly surf from digital to analog, but I just bought a $99 13" "Dynex" TV that requires me to make I think five keystrokes of the remote to switch from surfing analog cable to surfing digital broadcast TV. For now, that Dynex tuner is the inconvenient exception rather than the rule.

Where is this campground located?