Some general DirecTV / Tivo questions. (1 Viewer)

[Brian L]

If I'm not mistaken, all current HD set-top boxes combine OTA and DTV HD tuners. Also, since OTA HD is already encoded, they wouldn't have the problem I mentioned above. So I believe that HDDirecTiVo or whatever they call it when it comes out will indeed have all these capabilities.

Not quite, since they will need to also include an NTSC tuner to deal with my locals, which as you correctly pointed out, would also require the MPEG encoder.

If only DTV would give me my damn locals.

BGL

 

[Seth Paxton]

Ted,

Just something simple to add on the multiswitch to explain why it is a "fancy" switch. The LNBs for DirecTV only put out half the channels at once and are told which half to send by a feedback voltage from the tuner that's connected to them - this makes the outputs also inputs going the other direction, combining the voltage level signals.

Therefore if you were to use a regular signal splitter (like for cable) you would often run into 2 tuners sending back mixed messages on the same line. LNB gets all confused and does not work properly.

What a multiswitch does is takes in two inputs (like from a dual LNB) and hold each one at one level all the time. Then it watches its input lines from the tuners on its output side (often with 4-8 outputs) and selects which of the two lines needs to be sent to each one.

So everyone requesting "odds" is connected to the all-the-time odds input and everyone else sees the "evens" input.

You can even cascade these switches to create more outputs if need be, like if you have 2 more 2 to 4s you can create 8 outputs.

But again, don't make the mistake of trying to split the Dish signal like it was regular cable coax.


BTW, another handy feature of the mulit-switch (at least the one I have which is a popular model) is that it will also piggy-back a regular antenna signal, like for ATSC OTA HD channels (or just good old analog NTSC if you want). There is a 3rd input beside the 2 Dish inputs (odd/even) for the antenna, so you can put a nice OTA antenna near your dish mount and use your dish cable runs to also carry this antenna signal.

I use this to run ATSC antenna signals to my living room 2 floors below. This antenna option does require a special splitter on the other end that seperates the dish and antenna signals from each other.



And since examples are always nice, here's our current setup.

Regular dish (haven't gone eliptical yet because the trouble isn't worth it yet), dual LNB.

2 to 4 multiswitch in the attic/HT room.

DirecTivo dual tuner in the attic, 2 of the multiswitch outputs are used here.

Dish cable run down one floor to bedroom (in wall) to regular DirecTV box. Fiancee is ready to make this a Tivo too.

Dish cable run down 2 floors (outside house) to the living room where I have an HD DirecTV unit (RCA DTC-100). As I said above, I send the OTA HD signals down using the multiswitch piggy-back option. No Tivo in this room either.

I also have a kitchen TV that sees the video output of the bedroom dish box thanks to pre-existing cable lines in the wall, I just feed the coax output from the dish box (ch. 3) into the cable line (we do not have cable hooked up of course). I use an IR repeater to change channels. Sometimes we run into sharing problems between bedroom and kitchen viewers, but its not too bad. Repeater is sometimes fidgety, but mostly fine, going up 1 story and from the front to the back of the house.


If I wanted to add another dual tuner DirecTivo or just another dish box, then I would need to either get a bigger multiswitch, another 2 to 4 switch cascaded with the one I have (using 2 of its outputs), or perhaps pick up an eliptical dish with a built-in multiswich and then cascade my switch off of its outputs.


As you see, you can have video in more than one room without a 2nd box, BUT you won't be watching 2 different shows. If you live alone then one box with lots of video feeds (or coax runs, especially if your place is already wired) is fine. Add a roommate or spouse and the dual tuner Tivo won't be enough.



I see that this is a 2 month old thread, so maybe you've aleady made a purchase or two.