Switching to New Receiver

[jimpghpa]

Hello!

First off apologies if this has been covered before. Here is my issue. I have had dish network for years and years and have a dish 500 dish and 2 ancient receivers. So anyway the normal 4 cables come off my dish, and they go into a switch that converts it two 2 cables. One cable for one ancient receiver. The other cable for the other ancient receiver. I understand that the switch flips between 2 satellites.

A friend of mine could not resist the comcast triple play and has given me his dish network 322 receiver so I figured i could just pull the smart card out of my old receiver, stick it in this one, and be off to the races. But it just sits at the acquiring satellite screen.

I notice there are 2 inputs for satellite on this new 322. Do I need to bypass my old switch and feed 2 cables to this receiver? Is there something else I need to consider? Do I have to call dish networked to get flashed or something? Is what I am trying to do possible at all?

Thanks for any input!!

 

[cparker]

I don't think you can just swap out cards like that. I think they're tied to the receiver on activation.

 

[mdonnelly]

First, the 322 doesn't have a smart card (really it does, but it's built-in, not replaceable). You would have to call Dish to get it authorized on your account. If your friend still has a balance, he'll need to clear it up before Dish will authorize the receiver.

It sounds to me like there are ways to do what you want with what you have. If there are four lines coming out of the dish, it's probably a DP Quad. You would take two adjacent lines from there to your 322, and another line to your old receiver. I don't know why you have a switch in the middle now.

 

[boba]

You"re right you have ancient equipment The SW42 switch that you have was discontinued about 7 years ago. The first thing you need to do is call DISH with the R00 and "S00" numbers on the 322 to see if you can even activate it. Most 322's are leased by DISH to the customer your friend may not even own that receiver. You can use the receiver with your system both lines from the switch need to be connected to the 322 receiver they stay connected to the SW42 switch. The 322 must have 2 lines connected or it won't work correctly.

As an aside when DISH first started using the dish 500 it was Legacy only and 3 switches were used "SWAJ" / "SW21" & "SW42" only the SW21 continues to be available. At the introduction the system was limited to 2 receivers. A little later the SW64 was introduced to provide 3 satellite location capabilities and 4 receivers a SW44 was also a short lived switch that provided 2 satellite locations to 4 receivers. Except for the SWAJ the naming of the switch was simple 2 inputs to 1 receiver was a SWitch 2 inputs 1 output SW21.