Can HD ota signals be split? (1 Viewer)

[Brad Newton]

Here's what I would like to do once the local channels begin broadcasting in hd, supposedly next year. I currently run my ota signals through a channel combiner (along with my dish network feed) into a splitter that feeds 3 tvs in my house. Each tv can watch either the local channels or if the dish receiver is on, the satellite feed. I want to run this same configuration once I can receive hd (digital) signals. All of my tvs are now analog, but I do intend to upgrade my "main" tv next year, but am trying to plan my strategy. I think that all I have to do is run my ota feed into the hd receiver & then into the channel combiner, then into the splitter. Is this correct or will I have to make some other changes. I do not want to add hd receivers to all of the tvs if possible. Oh, I forgot that I have a vcr hooked up in my setup also. I can record ota or satellite channels & want to be able to do the same with the hd signals. Shouldn't this work,,,,,since the signals I am using now from dish network is digital????????

 

[Robert_J]

Brad, that's a lot of questions. You said you want to run your combined Dish/OTA combo once your locals go digital but you don't want an STB at each analog TV. That won't work with the digital signals. You have to have an STB to convert the digital back to analog. Your local stations will continue to broadcast analog for at least another 5 or 6 years so nothing should change with your existing setup.

I hope I answered some of your questions.

-Robert

 

[Allan Jayne]

You need as many HDTV set top receivers (STB's) as different HDTV stations you want to be able to see on different TV sets at the same time, in other words if you have just one HDTV receiver, all the TV sets wanting to be tuned to HDTV will have to get the same show.
Also the combiner has to accept the HDTV frequencies, which are somewhere in the UHF spectrum but not all within the space occupied by the analog UHF channels 14 - 69.
If your combiner handles them you can run the antenna feed (VHF, UHF NTSC, HDTV OTA) intot he combiner, dish network feed into the combiner, and then split the combined signal to the various TV sets. At the HDTV set the HDTV receiver is connected between its combined RF feed and that TV. The HDTV receiver will pick out HDTV OTA, regular OTA, and whatever channel the dish receiver is tuned to. The other TV sets will pick up just the regular OTA and whatever channel the dish receiver is tuned to. To feed the HDTV show to the other sets from the one HDTV receiver, you will need to run S-video cables from the HDTV receiver.
Your OTA antenna feed has all the stations' video signals, digital and analog, each on a 6 MHz RF channel. Your dish receiver takes in a bunch of signals on RF channels and outputs one as an analog RF channel (and perhaps also the same thing as S-video). The HDTV STB takes in all the OTA digital and analog signals each on a 6 MHz RF channel (the OTA antenna feed) and delivers the chosen one as (ideally 37 MHz and probably 25 MHz) 1080i component video and also as (probably 7 MHz) 480i S-video.
Other video hints:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/video.htm

 

[Brad Newton]

If my ota antenna receives both digital & analog signals, then if my analog tv receives this signal, & if I purchase a hdtv with a hd tuner included or a hd receiver separately, should they both display the same programming - only one will show it in analog & the other in hd? My dish programming is digital & passes through the channel combiner with no problem, why would ota digital signals be different?

 

[Allan Jayne]

I am not sure exactly what a channel combiner does but I believe that even when using one, you can have an analog TV downstream (after a splitter) tuning in any analog channel and a digital STB/TV downstream tuning in any different digital channel at the same time.

(Hypothetical oversimplification) If the channel combiner is simply the inverse of a splitter, and suppose the antenna delivered channels 2 - 19 and the dish receiver delivered its tuned in channel as 3, then channel 3 could have two stations on it and be unreceivable either as analog or digital. If the combiner was more sophisticated and (with your fine tuning) transposed the dish receiver's channel 3 to be channel 20, then there would be no interference. Or if you put the raw dish feed into the combiner and put the dish receiver downstream, if the antenna delivered channels 2 - 19 and the dish feed had channels 18 - 40, the latter would have to be transposed, say to channels 20 - 42 respectively, to avoid interference on channels 18 and 19.