Multi Switch Hell (1 Viewer)

[flwrpwr]

I live in a house that was wired with a single coax in almost every room. They all join in the attic or the basement. Seems it was designed for cable, but I am using DirecTv...

I have the oval 5lnb dish and it is currently only connected to the TIVO in my theatre.

I want to split it to the bar, living room, office and bedrooms. It would be very difficult to run any addition lines from the attic to the basement or to tap into the line in the wall. All switches would need to be located in the basement or the attic.

Here is a basic map of what I have.



My question is what switches do I need to get and where do I need to place them in order to have DirecTivo in the Bar and Theatre and single line Recievers in all the other rooms?

I think I can just feed the bedreooms from the other two out puts directly on the dish... that leaves the office, living room, bar and theater.

 

[David Willow]

I have a 4x8 multiswitch in my basement that feeds all of the receivers in my house. There are 4 lines coming in from the dish and 8 going out from the switch. I believe there is a better solution now called single wire or something similar.

You will probably get a quicker answer at satelliteguys.com or dbstalk.com...

 

[Robert_J]

Single Wire Multiswitct (SWM). It allows single wires to be run to each location and use a dual tuner DVR.

Why do you have a DirecTiVo and a 5LNB dish? First, the DirecTivo hasn't been in production in 3 years. If you have the HD model you are not taking advantage of the new HD offerings from D*. To use the SWM and get all of the satellite based HD programming, then you need an HR20, HR21, HR22 (current model) or HR23 (may be in production now).

I have an HR10-250 (HD DirecTiVo) an HR20 and HR22 all in my theater room. All of the receivers also feed an HD signal to the living room HDTV. The HR10 has the familiar TiVo interface and I use it mainly for OTA HD recording of sports. It has been upgraded to a 320GB drive. The HR20 has a dual ATSC tuner as well but I have never taken advantage of it. It has the standard 300GB drive. The HR22 does NOT have ATSC tuners. If you need them then DirecTV offers an external tuner that plugs into the USB port. It has the standard 500GB drive.

-Robert

 

[David Willow]

There ya go... That's what I was trying to think of. This will allow you to keep the existing wiring, but only if you have the newer receivers.

I believe you still need the 4 lines in from the dish. Is that correct Robert?

 

[Robert_J]

That is correct.

Besides buying one here, there also have a PDF of the installation guide. - link

-Robert

 

[David Norman]

Rereading the OP, I'm a little confused about which receivers you have? You mention DirecTIVO and 5LNB setup, but I don't think any of the currect TIVO units require the 5LNB dish? Do you have MPEG4 capable receivers elsewhere or am I misunderstanding which DVR you have. I'll leave my detailed post since I've already typed it, but if you already have 2 lines to the DVR and only single tuner units in each other location, the all you should need would be the normal WB-68 multiswitch designed for the 5LNB dishes. Run all 4 lines from the dish to the Multiswitch then a single line from the WB68 Multiswitch to each solo receiver and 2 lines from the MS to the DVR. This will give you 8 total tuners (6 solo units and 1 dual input DVR) without need for the SWM setup below as cool as that may be (or allow you an upgrade path later if you want to replace a legacy receiver with a new HD-DVR).


Depends on how the units are setup and on which Receivers are used.

The 1st of 2 videos at the bottom (the 2nd video is mostly about dish alignment and install though the last 3-4 minutes is about receiver hookup) is quite informative about the SWM LNB, but I'll summarize as best as I can:

DIRECTV AU9-SL5-SWM-B-PWS Five LNB Ka/Ku Slim Line Dish Antenna w/ Long and Short Brace, SIM01 SWM Installation Meter, ASL-1 Satelite Allignment Signal Locator and SL-5-SWM LNB | AU9-S-SWM-B1-PWS [DIRECTV Slim Line] | ka/ku ka ku LNB LNBs slimline sl

The more 'simple' unit is designed for normal home environments with newer receivers involves a SWM LNB which replaces the standard LNB at the Dish. The SWM LNB has only 1 line out which runs to the SWM-2 (or 4 or 8) splitter, but is limited to a max of 8 tuners -- 8 single input receivers or 4 DVR's or some combination of those. The good news is that a DVR with 2 tuners still only requires one wire run from the splitter location, but it still uses 2 of the 8 total frequencies being transmitted (about 7:30 mark of the second video).

Older/Legacy receivers will not work with the SWM LNB/Splitter setup. The HR20/21/22/23 DVR, H20/21/22/23 non DVR, R16/R22, and D12 plus anything newer will be fine. All these units require up to date software.




The more complex SWM-8 multiswitch was really designed for commercial environments and more complex home environments with larger number of receivers and also has support for a older receivers (plus anything that needs Sats 72/95). It requires all 4 lines out from the standard 5LNB dish to be run to the SWM8 multiswitch and then lines can be run from there to various number of Receivers -- 8 SWM-capable tuners using SWM splitters and up to 3 legacy units (or more with an additional Legacy extender Multiswitch). If you need more the 8 tuners then there is an option to stack units, but that is WAY beyond my ability.


Install instructions for the SWM setup.

http://forums.directv.com/pe/Reposit...leTraining.pdf

 

[flwrpwr]

My mistake I actually have HR22 not DirecTivo.

 

[Ed Francisco]

Sorry to revive an old thread, but my question is kinda related to this one. Anyway, I'm trying to get DirecTV installed in my house, basically because my wife wants the Filipino Channel (which is only carried by DirecTV) and I want the NFL Network (my cable company doesn't carry it). I also want an HDDVR in the 3 rooms I have a TV in. My house is single-coax wired from the outside switch box that my cable currently runs on to all the rooms in the house. The house is a 2 story house, with no basement, and built in the mid-90s. The house is built in a way that adding another coax cable to each room would require extensive renovations to the house. Given this, I did some research and saw that a SWM switch might be the answer to my problems so I went ahead and bought a SWM8 (since the DirecTV reps said they don't supply this part).

The DirecTV installer came and when I gave him the part, he looked like he'd never seen one of these things before. He looked at the instructions and said that it might work, but after looking at the wiring in my house, he said that it's wired using RG-59 cable rather than RG-6 cable. He refused to install it saying that because of the amount of data running through the wires, RG-59 won't work. If I was willing to not use HDDVRs, instead use an HD box or a regular box, he said it would probably work, but I wasn't willing to budge on that. So he left without even try to install it.

My question is - is what he said true? I've used the same cable in the 5 years I've been living here for digital/HD cable without any problems (I currently have cable 3 HDDVRs in my house). Why would cause problems for a DirecTV setup and not in my current one?

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Robert_J]

It's not the amount of data because RG-59 can easily carry the data. The center conductor is smaller than the conductor used for RG-6 and the voltage drop may be too much. DirecTV receivers send signals back to the multi-switch so it can choose which satellite to receive signals from. If you have solid copper conductor in your RG-59 then it may work if your cable runs are short (20 or 30 feet). I would think that most installers would pass on your install because if it doesn't work then they don't get paid. You may have to pay for your own install or install everything your self. It's not that difficult.

-Robert

 

[David Norman]

If you haven't done so I'd ask over on dbstalk.com. SWM8 with International channel is a custom/unique setup you are more likely to get better answers there since several high-end Independent Installers frequent that forum.

I don't think the RG59 should be a problem since not only does the SWM signal max at a lower frequency plus the SWM8 has it's own power supply so the receivers don't have to worry about supplying upstream power to the MS. From the little I can find, the SWM8 is actually much more compatible with RG59 than the non-SWM system. This is assuming your cable is in good condition and not extremely long -- I'm also assuming the Cabling is fixed and not possible to be exchanged easily.