Can cable and dish co-exist in the same house? (1 Viewer)

[Dave F]

I really want to switch to DirectTV for some HD channels, but I live in a house with some other people that use cable. Can a DirectTV and cable both be fed on the same coaxial line? Or would I need to have a second coxial line fed through the house?

-Dave

 

[RobWil]

No they can't be the same. The coax for DirectTv is connected to the satellite dish (LNB) and goes directly to the satellite receiver. Your cable coax comes from a box outside and has to connect to your cable box, or vcr or directly to your TV.

 

[Bob Saylor]

You can also run the dish receiver to the VCR along with the cable coax. When the dish receiver is off you would be watching cable. When the TV is on channel 3 or 4 (your perference) and the dish receiver is on, you'd be watching dish reception. I have the minimum cable package right now until locals are available in our area and I have it hooked up this way on one of my TVs because it only has basic inputs.

My other set has multiple inputs and I simply run the cable to the cable input and the dish to another. No problems.

 

[John_F]

Don't quote me on this, but I believe you could use the DirecTV HD receiver (depending on the receiver) to tune both cable and DirecTV channels (I know that the current HD receivers can tune both DirecTV and ATSC/NTSC).

Good luck,
John Flegert

 

[Steve Owen]

What about a diplexer? If your cable is just analog cable, you should be able to use a diplexer to run both cable and satellite along the same coax.

If you're going to do HDTV in one location, you should only need to bring in one coax from the dish (probably a Phase III triple-LNB dish).

If you say a bit more about how your cable is wired, maybe I can put together a diagram of how it might be wired.

-Steve

 

[Dave F]

Well, right now we have the analog cable coming into a box on the side of the house. From there, it is split to 4 locations in the house. In my part of the house, the cable it split once more for a cable modem, so I'll need to keep that line coming in for internet access.

-Dave