Please help with Hopper placement

[fordman302]

I'm scheduled to get a 1H/1J install April 3rd. I currently have a 625 in the back of my family room and I ran all the wires under the floor and up the opposite wall. Being SD, I used coax for the 625. I also ran a bunch of RCA's for my DVD, XBOX, etc. I was going to put the hopper on a shelf in the basement so I'd have a short HDMI run up the wall. The lines from my dish to the house are 3Ghz, so I assume the installer would replace my DP34 switch and just run a line from that to the hopper.

OR I found a 22AWG 50' HDMI cable for $53 and I could keep the DVR in the family room where the 625 is now.

Which would be better? Drawbacks from having hopper in basement would be remote locator and maybe worse remote reception.

 

[aaronwt6]

You shouldn't need to change / move anything. The Hopper / Joey setup allows you to feed HD to any room through the existing coax. That's the beauty of it. Also, the remote works very well on it. I really doubt you will have a problem with locating the unit wherever you want. Certainly no reason to purchase the HDMI cable if you don't need it.

 

[Brodieb]

Long HDMI cable runs can be problematic (see How Long Can HDMI Cable be Run? -- Blue Jeans Cable), so I would leave the Hopper in the basement and the joey upstairs.

 

[Luke McEneny]

the only disadvantage would be no pip at the joey location

 

[JM42]

I'm scheduled to get a 1H/1J install April 3rd. I currently have a 625 in the back of my family room and I ran all the wires under the floor and up the opposite wall. Being SD, I used coax for the 625. I also ran a bunch of RCA's for my DVD, XBOX, etc. I was going to put the hopper on a shelf in the basement so I'd have a short HDMI run up the wall. The lines from my dish to the house are 3Ghz, so I assume the installer would replace my DP34 switch and just run a line from that to the hopper.

OR I found a 22AWG 50' HDMI cable for $53 and I could keep the DVR in the family room where the 625 is now.

Which would be better? Drawbacks from having hopper in basement would be remote locator and maybe worse remote reception.

Make sure I understand the layout. You're getting one Hopper and one Joey. It sounds like you are asking only about the Hopper for the family room. The TV for the room is installed on the wall opposite where the current receiver currently resides. At the receiver location the DVD, XBox and possibly other equipment is installed at the same location as the receiver. Cables for the equipment run under down the wall, under the floor in the basement and up the opposite wall to the TV. We aren't talking about the Joey location at all at this time. Is that correct or am I way off base?

If that is the case and you want to keep the equipment where it is, then I would go with the HDMI cable option. You then have the option of putting in an HDMI switch at the equipment location to feed the TV HDMI from the receiver,XBOX, a possible future bluray player/roku/AppleTV, etc with the one HDMI cable run.

Long runs work fine in most cases, I have a 40' and a 60' run with no problems at all. Done the same at my parents home. Have helped a couple of friends out. No promises, but you shouldn't have any issues.

You want decent cable, but there is no need to over-buy. A good 24AWG cable should be fine. The 22AWG cables are pretty bulky and stiff. The cable head moldings are usually fairly long. Between the size of the modlings and stiffness of the cable they can be difficult to fit in behind a wall plate if your going that route. Piece everything together, including any wall plates and couplers and test before you actually run the cable.

 

[fordman302]

Make sure I understand the layout. You're getting one Hopper and one Joey. It sounds like you are asking only about the Hopper for the family room. The TV for the room is installed on the wall opposite where the current receiver currently resides. At the receiver location the DVD, XBox and possibly other equipment is installed at the same location as the receiver. Cables for the equipment run under down the wall, under the floor in the basement and up the opposite wall to the TV. We aren't talking about the Joey location at all at this time. Is that correct or am I way off base?

If that is the case and you want to keep the equipment where it is, then I would go with the HDMI cable option. You then have the option of putting in an HDMI switch at the equipment location to feed the TV HDMI from the receiver,XBOX, a possible future bluray player/roku/AppleTV, etc with the one HDMI cable run.

Long runs work fine in most cases, I have a 40' and a 60' run with no problems at all. Done the same at my parents home. Have helped a couple of friends out. No promises, but you shouldn't have any issues.

You want decent cable, but there is no need to over-buy. A good 24AWG cable should be fine. The 22AWG cables are pretty bulky and stiff. The cable head moldings are usually fairly long. Between the size of the modlings and stiffness of the cable they can be difficult to fit in behind a wall plate if your going that route. Piece everything together, including any wall plates and couplers and test before you actually run the cable.

Thanks, you are dead on with the layout, but I'm now leaning towards moving the hopper into the basement. It'll save having to run a huge hdmi and make mirroring and hard wiring internet to the hopper a lot easier. This discussion does give me confidence in wiring HDMI over long (~50') distances. Thanks again.