New home install -- Genie or something else?? And which antenna??

[diitto]

Hi, I have a Directv setup in my home (since 2005) that was last updated in 2009. In that year, I had Directv install a new (at the time) KaKu Slimline 5LNB dish. That dish has 4 cables that I then ran to a Zinwell WB68 in my attic. I brought 6 of those available outputs down into the house and brought them to 3 each HR20 (dual sat) HD DVR’s.

Now, we are buying a new home and I am trying to get back up to speed on the current technology. The home is being built and the builder is running a single cable from the eaves near the roof down to a central cable patch location in the home.

Is it true that newer dishes only require 1 wire from the antennna?? Instead of 4 like in the older days??? Are all hookups now just 1 wire down from the antenna??? Or are there still 4 wire antennas still using the Hi-Lo voltage and 20 kHZ or NO 20 kHz schemes like the older antenna systems used?? And is the Genie system the way to go in the house now??? Is it the only way available?? Or could I still have a system with independent DVR’s like I had before???

Bottom line is I need to get up to speed on what technology is available now… Can anyone help?? thanks… bob..

 

[Jimbo]

Hi, I have a Directv setup in my home (since 2005) that was last updated in 2009. In that year, I had Directv install a new (at the time) KaKu Slimline 5LNB dish. That dish has 4 cables that I then ran to a Zinwell WB68 in my attic. I brought 6 of those available outputs down into the house and brought them to 3 each HR20 (dual sat) HD DVR’s.

Now, we are buying a new home and I am trying to get back up to speed on the current technology. The home is being built and the builder is running a single cable from the eaves near the roof down to a central cable patch location in the home.

Is it true that newer dishes only require 1 wire from the antennna?? Instead of 4 like in the older days??? Are all hookups now just 1 wire down from the antenna??? Or are there still 4 wire antennas still using the Hi-Lo voltage and 20 kHZ or NO 20 kHz schemes like the older antenna systems used?? And is the Genie system the way to go in the house now??? Is it the only way available?? Or could I still have a system with independent DVR’s like I had before???

Bottom line is I need to get up to speed on what technology is available now… Can anyone help?? thanks… bob..

Yes, the normal dish now is a SWM3 (Single Wire Multiswitch), which allows 1 line in from the dish to work the set up, however, you now need a Power Inserter as well as SWM 4/8 splitter, depending on how many recvrs and which ones they are.

Personally, if you need recvrs for 2 , Main room, Bedroom, I would get a Genie and a HR24, skip the Genie clients, the Genie has 5 tuners in it, but if you have a Client, that uses one of the Genie tuners for each client you have.

If you get a Genie and a HR24, that adds 2 more tuners and if you ever have any trouble with the Genie, you have the HR24 to fall back on ... the Genie Clients won't work if the Genie should go down.

 

[raoul5788]

If you have more than eight tuners, you will get a swm16 switch which still requires four cables from the dish to the house. If you have eight or less, like Jimbo said, you only need one cable from the dish, which will have a swm lnb. Depending on which satellite your local sd channels are, you may get a 3 or 5 lnb.

 

[diitto]

Hi, Do I still need two Sat cables to go to each room where I want an HD-DVR (say like the HR24) if I want to be able to be able to independently record two channels at one time on that HR24?? Or is there some multiplexing going on now that precludes one from having to run that many cables to each room??? This is just the first of a few questions I have but I will start with this one?? So two cables to any room where I might want an HR24 that can record two programs at once???

thanks... bob..

 

[raoul5788]

With the swm setup, only one cable to the dvr and you can still use both tuners, or five in the Genie.

 

[diitto]

So what I want to have in this new home is, at most, 4 total tuners and I would like each of those 4 tuner locations to be able to record up to two programs at one time. The way the new home is being wired (as I speak) is that one wire comes down from near where I will one day soon have Directv install a dish (sounds like an SWM3 would be your recommendation). That one wire then comes to a central patch location in the living room. From this same patch location, a single satellite capable cable (and other cables as well but only one sat cable) goes from that patch location to each room where I might want a Directv receiver. But it's just one sat cable from the central patch to each remote room (bedroom, etc), not two like I'm used to using in my current house to drive dual sat input HR20's.

So with that description, and assuming I go with the SWM setup as you mentioned, do I have enough cables to do the job? One of the four desired locations will be right at this central patch location in the living room. Would it be required (or desired??) that the DVR at this central location be a Genie?? Or could it be something else, like it sounds like an HR24? And whatever it is, how do I cable from this one DVR at the central location out through my central patch to each of the other three locations??? Or does maybe the one incoming cable from the antenna somehow daisy chain out to each of the remote locations??? Or does the one incoming cable from the antenna connect into this SWM 4/8 splitter and then 4 of the 8 outputs head off to go to the receiver at the central location and to the other 3 DVR's in the other three rooms??? My guess/hope is it's this latter choice???

Holler back... thanks for the help... bob..

 

[raoul5788]

Remember that a Genie has 5 tuners and each dvr has two. If you have eight or fewer tuners, then you need one cable from the dish which will have a swm lnb to your central location. At that point you will have a swm splitter that will bring one cable to each dvr and the Genie, no daisy chaining. You also need a power inserter installed somewhere, but the installer will know where best to put it.

If you have more than eight total tuners, then you need four cables from the dish which will have a regular lnb to the central location where the installer will put a swm multiswitch. Off of the multiswitch he will use swm splitters to run to your Genie and dvrs.

 

[diitto]

It's obvious that I need to learn about the SWM technology that I currently don't understand. In my current system, I need two independent signals/cables off my Zinwell attic switch to provide two inputs to one of my HR20 DVR's so I can record two programs at once.

But you say in this new setup, if I have 8 or fewer total tuners, that I could run only one cable from the SWM splitter to say a bedroom where I have say an HR24 and that I could STILL RECORD TWO CH at ONCE. That would be good news but it only recent occurred to me that the way they are building the house, only one cable is going from the central location to each bedroom. How does one cable from the central location to say an HR24 in a bedroom work with only one cable??? In other words, I need to understand (which currently I don't) how this Single Wire Multiswitch technology works. Can anyone supply a good link to where I can read about such???

And I know for a fact that the builder is only running one cable from the satellite antenna location to the central location in the living room. So I would be best served to keep my total tuner count at 8 or below to avoid having to bring 4 cables down from the antenna???

So say I ask for NO genies but instead just 4 HD DVR's (HR24's??), one for the central location and one for each of three bedrooms, and with only one cable down from the antenna to the central location and only one cable from that central location to each bedroom, and with the addition of the power inserter and the 4x8 multiswitch, am I good?? Does this work with my "only one cable" setup??

sorry for asking so many questions but I'm trying to understand the "one cable" concept. thanks... bob..

 

[Jimbo]

With the scenario you described here, your fine.
The SWM equipment allows you to record one channel and watch another.
You definitely want a Swm set up, however it would be good to have 4 lines run from the Dish to the central location while you can to prevent possible issues later ...

Also, make sure they are running RG6 coax, thqts the standard so they probably are, but you might want to check just to be safe.

 

[diitto]

Hi, Thanks for the help. And as added help, I just now found a couple of Directv SWM install videos on YouTube that answered a lot. I was thinking (before) that somehow having a Genie was a key part of how one could use the "one wire down from the antenna" system. But now I see that has nothing to do with it. In fact, I likely want to stay away from the Genie (correct me if I'm wrong) cause the minute I hook up one of those, I immediately eat up 5 of my allowed 8 total tuners before I need to start dropping more cables (4 versus 1) from the antenna. And if I eat up 5 of the 8 then I can only have one more HD DVR (uses up 2 inputs) befor I've used up 7 of the 8 allowed tuners. And if I add one more HD DVR (uses 2 inputs) now I'm at 9 total tuners and I can no longer just have one wire down from the antenna. Right so far??

I for sure want an HD-DVR in at least three rooms so that seems to say, unless I want to drop more cables from the antenna, that I need to stay away from using the Genie at all unless I want to get into the world of learning about Mini's and such (whole other discussion I imagine).

What is the newest and best non-Genie Directv HD-DVR??? The HR-20's (3) I currently have in my existing home are very old and surely to die one day soon. So I am going to ask for new HD-DVR's when we move to this new house.

This installed video, by the way, gave a nice explanaion of how you can just run one wire to each HD-DVR and yet still record two programs at once. I get that part now. But othewise, is what I said above correct?? thanks... bob.

 

[raoul5788]

It's obvious that I need to learn about the SWM technology that I currently don't understand. In my current system, I need two independent signals/cables off my Zinwell attic switch to provide two inputs to one of my HR20 DVR's so I can record two programs at once.

But you say in this new setup, if I have 8 or fewer total tuners, that I could run only one cable from the SWM splitter to say a bedroom where I have say an HR24 and that I could STILL RECORD TWO CH at ONCE. That would be good news but it only recent occurred to me that the way they are building the house, only one cable is going from the central location to each bedroom. How does one cable from the central location to say an HR24 in a bedroom work with only one cable??? In other words, I need to understand (which currently I don't) how this Single Wire Multiswitch technology works. Can anyone supply a good link to where I can read about such???

And I know for a fact that the builder is only running one cable from the satellite antenna location to the central location in the living room. So I would be best served to keep my total tuner count at 8 or below to avoid having to bring 4 cables down from the antenna???

So say I ask for NO genies but instead just 4 HD DVR's (HR24's??), one for the central location and one for each of three bedrooms, and with only one cable down from the antenna to the central location and only one cable from that central location to each bedroom, and with the addition of the power inserter and the 4x8 multiswitch, am I good?? Does this work with my "only one cable" setup??

sorry for asking so many questions but I'm trying to understand the "one cable" concept. thanks... bob..

If you get four dvrs, you won't need a switch, just a four way swm splitter, power inserter, and swm lnb.

 

[InHouse]

One thing I missed or wasn't mentioned is that line from dish/roof location needs to go to an exterior grounding location then into your central cabled location

 

[raoul5788]

By code all dish installations need to be grounded regardless of type.

 

[mr_tv]

I am an installer for Dish and Directv. BOTH can use a single line to the media panel or where the bundle of cables are that distribute to rooms throughout the house. Now having said that, IN SOME RARE cases it is nice to have two for Dish installs. That is in case the customer wants two Hoppers in the home. The two lines are then needed or I have to install a new line. Like I said though this is rare. For Directv a single line from the dish to panel and a single line to every room even if you have a two tuner DVR or five tuner Genie DVR. Two lines to each room is nice in case you also want to run a local over the air antenna. Generally it sounds like everything is going to work out just fine for you.

 

[Jimbo]

One thing I missed or wasn't mentioned is that line from dish/roof location needs to go to an exterior grounding location then into your central cabled location

By code all dish installations need to be grounded regardless of type.

However, you never want more than one ground in the system.

Your suppose to always run to the house ground, but thats not always practical.

Also, there are plenty of dishes that are not grounded at all.

 

[raoul5788]

By code all dish installations need to be grounded regardless of type.

However, you never want more than one ground in the system.

Your suppose to always run to the house ground, but thats not always practical.

Also, there are plenty of dishes that are not grounded at all.

My "by code" response covers both situations. Yes, the dish is supposed to ground to the house, but sometimes that's impractical. As you noted, many dishes have no ground at all.

 

[Jimbo]

My "by code" response covers both situations. Yes, the dish is supposed to ground to the house, but sometimes that's impractical. As you noted, many dishes have no ground at all.

Question :

My dish is on a 15 ft galvanized pole, with 3-4ft in the ground .... isn't THAT grounded ?
Anything hits it and it's going to EARTH ground first ...

If Lightning hits it, it doesn't matter how grounded it is, somethings getting taken out.

 

[raoul5788]

The problem is that it isn't bonded to your home's service. I don't know all the issues, but I know you can get ground loops that way, which can be a cause of hum or buzz in your sound system.

 

[Claude Greiner]

Run 4 from the eve to the central wiring location. From there 1 cable is fine to each tv