I can't tell you how much I'd appreciate help on this one. It would really make things nicer for my family.

At the moment, I'm trying my hardest to get a room on the second floor of my parents' home hooked up with their satellite service. My goal is to have HD, two-tuner DVR access to that room. I can get ahold of the equipment, but my issue is with getting the signal to reach the room.

The house was wired in '92, with the satellite atop the chimney, the wires running two stories down to the basement, and some wires running two stories back up. When DirecTV started offering HD, the guy who initially did the wiring said that the distance to the top floor rooms might be too far for it, and it appears he was right. However, I think if I have a receiver in the basement simply feeding one of those coax lines, there might be enough amplification to get to the top floor.

I have two questions, then:

1) Might I be right in thinking this? Or would you have other suggestions?

2) If that works, the issue becomes how to control that box. I've seen IR injectors before, but I can't seem to find any. It's just a little inline box on the TV side that takes IR signals from a receiver, and transmits them along with the video through the run to the other end. Unfortunately I can't seem to find any, or I found one where the IR receiver was $89, which seems absurd for a little wire and an IR receiver, not including all the other parts to this little system.

I'm open to other suggestions as well.

Thanks so much for any help you can give. I'm really anxious to get something working here.

If your only trying to get service in the 1 room upstairs you might be able to use a Satellite Signal Booster/Amplifier.


It seems anything that can covert HDTV signal output to run over coax is very expensive. This thread on somethingawful has links to info on how to do it with older hardware. I also found this @ $799 dollars and only a preorder item it would be better to spend the money on rewiring the house.

My dish has a multiplexor built-in, so that it could feed two receivers independently if it needs to. It has four plugs on it, two for each receiver.

You could just replacce the dish with one that has four plugs on it, and run the second set of wires to another receiver in the upstairs room. That's the easiest since it allows full independent control of both receivers with the factory remote.

Thanks, Tony, but I should also mention that money is a little bit of an object, and this is most definitely not something I can do myself. We'd need that 3rd party installer to come out, get on the roof and up the chimney to the very tall pole the dish is on, and run the new cables across the back of the 35"+ high roof. That's a little out of the price range at this moment


I've tried those in the past with no success. I might give them a try again, but they come in different varieties and I'm not sure which one would work best.


My hope was that I would be able to find an HD DVR with a coax output, but it looks like DirecTV doesn't offer that on their receivers anymore. Their older ones did. That way I could put the box in the basement where it could get a good signal, and figure out another way to control it remotely, either with some IR solutions or RF. The newest DirecTV receiver appears to have RF built in, but has no coax out, so I'd have to look for a very expensive solution like the one you proposed.


Thanks for the help though, guys. I really appreciate it. Hopefully I'll be able to figure this one out and quickly.

How many receivers will you need working in the house? Is the dish on the chimney the oval dish with multiple LNB's connected?


Edit: Is the cable run more than 200"? I think that the SPI1418 is what you might need. I would call them and confirm but I believe this is used to get the signal to the power to the LNB's when the cable is to long. The amps might also need to be used to get the signal back to the receiver.

I'm pretty sure it's whatever the latest dish is. We had it replaced sometime last spring.

The run goes down and back up about 3.5 stories and about 40 feet across the back of the house, so yeah I'd say it's probably more than 200'. At one point I wasn't getting any signal to the TV in that room, SD or HD, but I swapped out this splitter that took the two sat lines and output to 8 receivers for a powered one (that was lying around in the closet with the connections), and now I get SD in that room, but not HD. In fact, HD doesn't work in the main home theater room. Possibly because it's too strong perhaps? Is that possible?

Try putting the old splitter back in and see if HD works in the main home theater room. The powered splitter you have might be the wrong signal range, it seems that you need to be using a device that does 950-2150Mhz.

I found an FAQ on the TiVo forums that seems very informative about the multiswitch.

I'm gonna call BS on this one. You most certainly can run a cable yourself, and quite cheaply. It's by far the best solution. Just do a little reading on how to properly ground it.

I'm sure I could, but not without borrowing extension ladders to reach at least 30 feet, climbing on a roof and up a chimney, and just generally messing with stuff I don't know about. I really don't want to risk injury here

One of the best things about my "new" house is that one of the second-floor window opens up onto the roof. No more ladders!

What he said.

Agreed. I've gone down the amplifier road before, but maybe I'll have more luck this time. I'm also hoping that they have something at Radio Shack similar to that one Attack linked earlier. I know I've gotten other amplifiers there in the past. I really don't have much time to work with here...

I see that RadioShack.com has three items listed. You can use the tool online to see if them have them in a store near you but I would just call the local stores.

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103926
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2419398
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103913

I would also recommend calling a local Satellite company and see what they would recommend, they might even be willing to come out with a few different products and only sell you what is needed.

One more question, though I'm sure it's a dumb one:

The satellite has a cable run down to the basement, feeds into a splitter that gives me up to 8 connections for receivers, and then one of those connections feeds a long cable run upstairs to the receiver in the room in question. So my question is, where do I put the amplifier? Should I put it where the line to the room starts? Or by the receiver in that room? How do these things do their mojo?

*edit*
I actually tried the third product you linked. It didn't work for me, though...

An 8-way splitter? Well, that explains why the signal is so weak.

How many feeds out of that splitter are in use? If only a couple, then replace it with a 3-way or 4-way splitter, and the signal will double in strength *without* the amplifier needed.

If you want to install the amp, I'd put it on the input side of the splitter, before the signal is split up.

Cheers

Mark is correct. You want the amplifier as close to the original signal as possible, that way you aren't amplifying any noise and signal degradation.

I've had much more luck with amplifiers and splitters on cable than satellite. Mostly has something to do with signal range. I get some channels and not others (and yes..the range on the splitter was supposedly correct).

I hope your using a multiswitch not a splitter as a splitter would have no idea on how to route power to the LNBs correctly. Can you post of very good photo of this device or find an image or link to the item online?

From the FAQ I linked to:

A multiswitch takes the input from both of the LNB's (both cables from a dual LNB dish HAVE to be connected to the multiswitch)...it then locks one of the LNB's to always look at the even transponders and the other LNB to always look at the odd transponders. This is why a multiswitch only works with Dual LNBs and not single LNB's. The switch then has multiple outputs to receivers (4,8,etc). When you connect the receiver to the multiswitch, the switch determines which of the two LNB's the receiver needs to look at depending if it needs to view odd or even transponders. When you change the channel, the switch then swaps your connection to the other LNB when needed. With a multiswitch, the LNB's never change which side they are looking at.



It seems that over 100' of cable they recommend that you use a powered/amplified multiswitch.

What is your end goal? How many tuners do you need to run? Lets say you want two HD dual tuners and two standand receivers that would mean you need multiswitch with 6 outputs.

Wait do you really only have one cable into the basement from the dish?

I wasn't sure what to call it, so I called it a splitter, but I knew that wasn't right. Yes, I'm fairly certain that it's this multiswitch you're talking about. I'll take a picture when I head over to my folks' place later today.

It has 8 outputs, and I believe 7 of them are taken up. At this point in time, the absolute necessary minimum needed would be 4, preferably 5 or 6.

The problem with amplifying before the multiswitch is that it appears that this messes with the main home theater's signal level. Before I was working on all this, I had an unpowered multiswitch (now I know what to call it), and the home theater could get HD channels. I then replaced it with a powered multiswitch with the exact same connections, and this took out HD for the home theater, which is only about 15 feet away from the multiswitch, as opposed to at least 100' for the room in question.

I'd be happy to minimize the number of cables on the output side of the multiswitch, but this raises a problem I've had since starting on this project: it's such a pain to figure out which cable goes where! I can only identify one of the cables going up to the room I'm trying to get signal in. This is frustrating, because in that room, it's double-coax cable, and I can only reliably trace one of them down to the cabling closet in the basement. Argh! I can't stand this...

You need a cable tester or toner with a probe.
Coax Cable Tester
MultiCable Tester

Coax Cable Toner and Probe with phone cable Toner

How many cables do you have coming into the multiswich?

You need a tone generator.

Wait, slow down. Is this a DirecTV satellite?

You need two cables to each receiver on a DirecTV system. Not one. It's a multiplexed signal. The outputs off of the multiswitch should be in ganged pairs, and there should be two inputs on the back of each DirecTV receiver.

Perhaps the *FIRST* amplifier product he linked is the one you need: http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103926

From Attack's post: "it seems that you need to be using a device that does 950-2150Mhz." The product description of that first product seems to match that.

I've never used those signal amplifiers so I don't know.

That's not strictly true. If you put the amplifier too close to the source (LNB) then there is a danger you'll overload the amp's input thereby resulting in a distorted output.

I posted some pictures of my setup at home here. That system distributes OTA DVB-T (Freeview) and satellite all over the house and can scale to 100's of rooms if needs be by cascading.

That should do for most installations, although I prefer using slope compensated amps in long run installations.

Maybe I'm wrong but don't you only need two cables for receivers that can tune two channels at once (Only DVR units)?

Only DVRs have inputs for two runs and that's purely for dual-tuner support. You can run only one tuner if you desire and leave the 2nd input disconnected. Non-DVR DirecTV equipment only has one input and can receive all the same channels.

The "splitter" Dignan is talking about is likely a Zinwell WB68 multiswitch (if it was provided free from DirecTV). This was/is standard equipment when his 5-LNB dish was installed. It's an un-powered multiswitch as far as plugging it into the wall is concerned. However, the DirecTV receivers power the multiswitch (or the dish if you have no multiswitch). Whether the receivers can provide enough power on a long run is another matter.

On the DirecTV Ku/Ka (5-LNB) system, the most crucial part to get right is the outside run from the dish to the multiswitch. It should be as short as possible and with 3GHz quad-shielded RG6 cable only. The inside wiring should be the same ideally, but RG59 was likely used when building the house because cable TV was what they had in mind... not DirecTV specs developed 15 years in the future.

At this point, I think your best bet is to scrap the multiswitch and migrate your distribution to the SWM system. Among other things, the SWM system allows dual-tuner DVR support with only a single cable run to each DVR and the inside cable can quite poor quality... as long as it's in good shape. This is possible because, unlike the traditional multiswitch system, the SWM system only sends the channels the receiver is requesting through the internal house wiring. Instead of cramming 500+ channels on a coax cable, it's only sending 1 or 2.

The downside to the SWM system is the cost associated with the equipment and the limited support for any non-MPEG4 receiver. The SWM-8 that I linked only has 3 legacy ports. This means that only 3 tuners are available to older equipment such as DirecTiVos, Hughes, RCA, Philips, or Sony branded boxes. If you have more than 3 tuners that require a legacy connection, you will need to buy (lease) new equipment that's compatible with the SWM.

SWM is natively supported by all current DirecTV boxes and DVRs starting with the HR20/H20.

I can help with install questions. Just let me know.

Ah, good point! Sorry, I've just been a dual-tuner DVR guy for so long I forgot that that was the reason for the two cables.

On the other hand, from Dignan's original post...



If he can't run a second cable, then it looks like the SWM system you linked is his only option.

The SWM isn't his only option, but it's the cheapest I can think of.

Another option would be use use a Slingbox Pro-HD on one of the existing HD DVRs that won't be in use at the same time as the bedroom TV. Then, hook up a Sling Catcher to the bedroom TV. On the LAN, the result would be "near HD" quality and there would be no extra monthly fee that another DVR would add to his DirecTV account. You would also get the traditional benefits of owning a Slingbox.

However, Slingbox Pro-HD is about $400 and I think the Sling Catcher is about $300. Not a small cost, and you have to figure in what wired, wireless, or powerline networking gear you would need.

Despite what early reviews may state, I think the Sling Catcher actually works quite well. I set one up so my parents can watch their DirecTV service at their vacation home that only has basic cable service. It's pretty slick and the quality is pretty good even over the internet.

At the moment, I have everything set up with HD to the upstairs room. I definitely had to switch back to the unpowered multiswitch, though.

Unfortunately, I can't get the second line working. It doesn't make any sense, though. In the room, it's one of those 2 coax cables stuck together, you know? Where you can separate the two by pulling on them? What's that called?

Anyway, in the basement I know exactly where one of that pair comes out, and it still has the other connected to it, but even with the other cable in the pair connected right next to the good one, and yet to the receiver, it's as though there's nothing there. Any ideas?

It sounds like a bad connector, look inside the connector is the pin shorting out? It could also be that the pin is cut to short. I would put new ends on and see if that fixes it. If not then the cable might be bad.

You don't mean a stereo patch cable do you?

If so, that's entirely the wrong kind of cable to be sending a satellite signal through, and could be the source of the problem.

Tony,

I'm sure he has something more like this

Uh, yeah. What do you take me for, Tony? Wait, don't answer that.

Besides, I don't think you could fit those stereo cable pins into a coax connector post. I think that would tip me off pretty quickly

Oh! I didn't know such a thing existed, I've only ever seen RG6 in single-cable spools.

Then again, I was eight years old before I discovered that meat came on pork chop bones.