sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information catv problem

Hey guys I have a customer whos house i wired for voice data and catv he has a satalite on top of his house there are two cables comming from the satalite one goes down stairs and one goes up stairs we split the cable going up stairs to give him cable in two other rooms up stairs he now says that he is getting some chanels up stairs but not all of them his cable co direct tv says that tey dont see a problem on their end so it must be a cable issue he said that they told him it could be warter or dirt in the cable and that would make it send from one end and not the other has any one ever seen this type of problem before ?

You can't split the feeds coming from a dish with conventional splitters. The splitter shorts out the
DC feed coming from the receiver feeding the LNB (head) on the dish. Sometimes you will lose all channels and other times maybe just the odds or evens.

If he isn't using both those feeds, remove the splitter and use couplers instead.

If he wants a sat receiver in all rooms (meaning there will be 3 receivers on the dish), you will have to install a "2X4 switch." It looks just like a big splitter but it wires a little different.

You will have to install it at a convenient place where you can take those two feeds coming in from the dish now, cut them, and wire them to the two inputs on the switch. This will now give you up to 4 outputs that you can use 3 of them to feed those rooms.

I need to split my sat to provide a connection out to my shop. i currently have a 3 dish system. With one of these 2x4 switches, will i be able to split the signal out to the shop? Will i need another receiver or will I have to set the channel in the house off of the other receivers?

thanks,
Brian

You need a receiver for every TV in order to get all channels. And you will need a multi-switch. 2x4 multi-switches are the most common. You can get one at Best Buy, Circuit City, and I think even WalMart sells them now.

The other way to do it, is to take the RF output from one of the receivers, and put a splitter there. One output from the splitter will go to the TV where the receiver is....the other output can go to another TV in another part of the house. Both TVs will have to view the same station.

you will need an additional receiver..you can also get a 5X8 splitter, if you have a 3 lnb dish you should be able to connect 4 tvs without a splitter

Do you mean 3 receiver system?

If the answer is yes, you may already have a 2x4 switch installed somewhere or it may be built right into the LNB (head).

...I have a customer who's house I wired for voice, data and catv. He has a satellite {dish}on top of his house. There are two cables coming from the satellite, one goes down stairs and one goes up stairs. We split the cable going up stairs to give him cable in two other rooms up stairs. He now says that he is getting some channels up stairs but not all of them. His cable co direct tv...

This probably is a 3 dish installation with a multi-switch that originally fed 2 receivers. This isn't CATV or cable and Direct TV isn't a cable company. You can't split the cables coming from the dishes at least in the usual way you would with CATV.

I'm a firm believer in only doing things for customers that I know how to do, so I'm going to tell you what we would tell anybody who comes here and is in over their head- get professional help.

-Hal

Agree with Hal, hire someone so you don't damage what is already in place.

Thanks for the advice

Nuthin' Fancy is correct. The two solutions are the ones he mentioned. A more detailed explanation sent by PM.