Switching from cable to sat questions

[alphadog]

Hi all,

Newbie here on this forum. I have some satellite questions regarding switching from Cable to Sat. My current setup is as follows:

Belden RG6 homerun from 8 rooms to the basement tied into a splitter with incoming from cable company. One room has a DVR, the other rooms just do analog cable. Yes, I have 8 TVs in the house.

Since cable is always going up, I want to switch to satellite. I have not really decided which brand yet, but I am first most concerned with installation. I DO NOT want a converter box in every room. Nor do I want to use the newer receiver boxes that let you control a second TV via a UHF remote - this means more wiring.

What solutions exist for Homerun installations with this many TVs?
Do I need 2 dishes as they seem to max at 4 LNBs?
Can I stack 8 receivers in the basement and control them all remotely?

Any online guides would be great....

Also, one of my TVs is HD (more on the way). Even though I have an HD DVR through the cable company, the picture looks like crap on HD - compared to OTA HD. Actually the HD is OK from the cable company, but running all the other channels through the composite in on my 61 inch rear projection gives me digital cable that looks worse then analog.

I don't watch any pay per view or movie channels, I just want the basic 100 or 150 type package, but i fear that with 8 TVs it will cost me more then cable - I really want to dump cable.

Any help or advice is appreciated.

 

[Andrewwski]

No...you don't need two dishes...you can use a switch on one of them to get 8 outputs.

Since you don't want a receiver in every room, the best way would be to put all 8 tuners in another location, and get RF remotes (either that control the receiver directly, or that control IR repeaters), and then run the output from the receivers into each TV's feed.

If you want the ability to watch 8 different programs on 8 different TV's, you need 8 tuners. Assuming you use 4 of Dish Network's Dual-Tuner receievers, this would cost an extra $15 per month for those tuners IF you had a landline phone to plug them in to.

If you can share a tuner between rooms, you could use less receivers.

With DirecTV, you'd need 8 separate receivers, which would amount to $35 per month extra (same as Dish without a landline).

Plus the extra DVR fee if you want a DVR.

With Dish, you'd have 4 RF remotes already with the receivers, but you'd need to buy 4 more to control the other boxes from that location. These would not necessarily need to be Dish remotes, they could be universal RF remotes.

I don't think you'll find that Dish or DirecTV's SD is better than digital cable. Most of their SD is still heavily compressed and doesn't look too great.

With the extra charges due to the amount of tuners, you probably won't be saving anything.

Also, if you wanted to put tuners in four rooms, you could use Dish's dual-tuners with the RF remote. If you use diplexers there are no extra cables to run. That'd help save the cost of the extra RF remotes.

Either way, it's going to probably amount to more each month than cable. Dish Network charges $20 for HD channels, DirecTV $10. Plus factor in another $5 for a DVR. With Dish, you'll be paying about $40 over the basic package's cost, and with DirecTV, you'll be paying about $50 over the base package's cost.

Probably not cheaper than cable.

 

[alphadog]

Thanks for all the advice.

You clarified and confirmed my thoughts. One more question regarding the dual tuner receivers. Everything i read indicates they operate on one IR remote and one RF remote, but you indicate that the dual tuner's tuners can both be accessed via RF - if so, then I would do this. I don't mid the extra RF remotes, as most support the TV's IR. I just don't want to do a bunch of IR extender stuff if I have to access one tuner of the two via IR.

Is there any solution that lets me homerun a sat solution to one receiver in the basement and convert everything to anolog - then just pipe the 108 channels of analog over my standard cable?

I think the whole industry is taking a bunch of steps backwards - boxes in every room. The cableCard fix has been a disappointment just like the digital channels that are SD.

In the end, I really don't care where I get my signal, I just don't want a box in every room. Why hang a nice flatscreen on the wall (even a 19") and then need to put a cabinet below it just to house a cable box? Grrrrr!

I guess I am one of the few that doesn't want to pay $100 to $150 per month for standard cable or its equivalent. I may just pack it all up and do Over The Air HD everywhere and be happy with that.

Well, Thanks again for the advice and letting me vent.

 

[Andrewwski]

Strange...according to the main listing page the OP replied to this post at about 3:30 PM, yet when I click the thread, there's no 2nd reply.

 

[alphadog]

I have been having loads of issues with posts showing up. I did a Quick Reply, it was there, I went to edit something and it was gone. I hit back to repost and it told me a post with that content already existed. I had a real hard time just trying to post originally and sent the error to the admin. One of posts finally showed up a day later.

 

[alphadog]

As for my original post and your reply, I guess I just have to look into it deeper. I wish the Dish companies made a single device that you put in your basement and that let you modulated 108 analog channels on your local in-house cable.

Over the air may go all HD in 2009, but until everything over sat and cable goes that way, it is a real pain. Maybe Cable cards will really work by then.

Ah well, I love my OTA HD, I just wish everything else could measure up.

Thanks for the advice, it confirmed what I knew and gave me some new ideas. As for the diplexer, are you saying to pump the output from Tuner2 in the dual tuner box, back down the homerun to that room, to my switch and then bedroom 2 will get the second signal? If I do 4 of these, are they tunable? How do I make sure that Tuner 2 in box A goes to TV2 and not TV 3 or TV 4? I will need 4 diplexers, right?

As for the RF remotes, I looked into this, but it seemed like one tuner is chained permanently to the IR receiver/remote. Can I force a dual tuner box to use 2 RF remotes - 1 for each tuner? If so, I skip the diplexers and just 4 dual tuner boxes in the basement and get a bunch of RF remotes.

 

[dfergie]

I have been having loads of issues with posts showing up. I did a Quick Reply, it was there, I went to edit something and it was gone. I hit back to repost and it told me a post with that content already existed. I had a real hard time just trying to post originally and sent the error to the admin. One of posts finally showed up a day later.

Our spam program is catching your posts for some reason...

 

[Andrewwski]

As for my original post and your reply, I guess I just have to look into it deeper. I wish the Dish companies made a single device that you put in your basement and that let you modulated 108 analog channels on your local in-house cable.

Over the air may go all HD in 2009, but until everything over sat and cable goes that way, it is a real pain. Maybe Cable cards will really work by then.

Ah well, I love my OTA HD, I just wish everything else could measure up.

Thanks for the advice, it confirmed what I knew and gave me some new ideas. As for the diplexer, are you saying to pump the output from Tuner2 in the dual tuner box, back down the homerun to that room, to my switch and then bedroom 2 will get the second signal? If I do 4 of these, are they tunable? How do I make sure that Tuner 2 in box A goes to TV2 and not TV 3 or TV 4? I will need 4 diplexers, right?

As for the RF remotes, I looked into this, but it seemed like one tuner is chained permanently to the IR receiver/remote. Can I force a dual tuner box to use 2 RF remotes - 1 for each tuner? If so, I skip the diplexers and just 4 dual tuner boxes in the basement and get a bunch of RF remotes.

You'd need 8 diplexers. You'd have two or three lines (depending on number of satellites you need to receive from) running into a DPP44 switch. From there, the four outputs would go into four diplexers. From those four diplexers would be the four cables to the rooms with tuners. In those rooms, you'd need a diplexer for each, and then a DPP separator. From the original four diplexers, you'd also attach the cables going to TV2.

Yes...you can use 4 RF remtoes for TV1's. Dish sells IR to UHF kits for this use. You can also use third party RF universal remotes with an IR base station in the basement.

 

[alphadog]

Ok, so lets say I take the plunge and go for Sat. On my main TV that is 6 year old Rear Projection (61" Widescreen), If I go with a HD DVR, I can input that into the TV via component inputs - how smart is the HD DVR tuner?

I mean output from the DVR will be 1080i for HD that is in that format and fill the screen, but what about other signals? Will I get my local stations in HD if they are broadcasting over the air that way? Is this via an OTA antenna tied into the system? How about Standard Def? Will it look at least as good as current Analog cable and will it be output in some type of stretched or smart stretch format?

Any more info you or anyone else has on what to expect would be great.

 

[Andrew317620]

I'd really like to go to satellite, preferably directv, but I'm told that in order to have full functionality for the dvr's, there need to be two cables into the dvr. Unfortunately, I only have one cable into each room, so does anyone know of a workaround solution to having two cables (I'd like to avoid drilling holes and having to pay a lot of extra fees to fish the second cable through the house). If not, has anyone heard if there's any technology coming that would mean I'd only need one cable? Thanks.

 

[Andrewwski]

Wait for the Single-Wire Multiswitch. That will allow for the use of one cable for a DVR.

 

[gdarwin]

Dish already has a single cable solution for their dual sat tuning DVR's