Home Automation - digital satelite?
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bryan77
05-13-02, 10:24 AM
I am looking to purchase a dish, and want to run cable to every bedroom,1 in the basement, 1 in the living room and 1 in the garage.and also run a phone line with them for the dish, I picture just buying a splice block so all the cables will run off a 1 or 2 cables from the dish so If I go into the garage I can just take the receiver out there and plug it in, or vice versa.Is this possible? If so what kind of cable do I pull, and is there a maximum lenght, its about 100' out to my garage! thanks
Smokey
05-13-02, 08:21 PM
Good Evening, bryan77:
I admire your courage but you haven't thought this out fully. If you are going to run cable for a satellite system, it is recommended you run RG-6 swept to 1100 MHz. Low loss and it will last a lifetime.
However, running a satellite dish, you will need dual LNA's and the best you can hope for is four rooms maximum. That is, of course, that you do a good job of splitting the signal and use satellite splitters instead of Radio Shack specials. And each room will have to have a satellite receiver. You can't just plug satellite information into a TV. It has to be decoded and changed for you to receive it.
Second thought: I built space satellites for NASA and understand the "downlink" requirements. Rain drops do nasty things to a satellite downlink. Attenuation, drop-outs, etc. So, when you are home during bad weather, guess what doesn't work? Yup! The satellite link. Reception gets real bad.
Smokey recommends you talk to your cable company, buy cable compatible amplifiers from Radio Shack, run RG-59 cable, and wire all those rooms that way. It's cheaper, it's more dependable, and you'll enjoy it more.
Think about it!
Smokey ;)
I admire your courage but you haven't thought this out fully. If you are going to run cable for a satellite system, it is recommended you run RG-6 swept to 1100 MHz. Low loss and it will last a lifetime.
However, running a satellite dish, you will need dual LNA's and the best you can hope for is four rooms maximum. That is, of course, that you do a good job of splitting the signal and use satellite splitters instead of Radio Shack specials. And each room will have to have a satellite receiver. You can't just plug satellite information into a TV. It has to be decoded and changed for you to receive it.
Second thought: I built space satellites for NASA and understand the "downlink" requirements. Rain drops do nasty things to a satellite downlink. Attenuation, drop-outs, etc. So, when you are home during bad weather, guess what doesn't work? Yup! The satellite link. Reception gets real bad.
Smokey recommends you talk to your cable company, buy cable compatible amplifiers from Radio Shack, run RG-59 cable, and wire all those rooms that way. It's cheaper, it's more dependable, and you'll enjoy it more.
Think about it!
Smokey ;)
bryan77
05-13-02, 10:07 PM
thanks for the reply! I will take your advice and think about it. I was just thinking of running the cable for the dish just incase we decide to change bedrooms. So your saying I couldnt unplug my receiver from lets say upstairs in the master bed rm and take that reciever out to the garage and plug it in out there, providing I ran the cable out there of course, maybe Im just not reading you right.Right now I dont know very much about dishes but hey Im starting in the right place, In my mind which very well could be wrong I picture the cable for a dish being similar to a single co-ax cable on a cable system in town that just runs on 1 cable not a/b box. with of course the right splitters. Sorry If I confused you, just trying to think this all out before I even want to get started
skybird
05-26-02, 08:56 PM
Here's the deal on your satellite issue. You can run as many TV's as you want off of your satellite dish you just need somethinng that is called a multiswitch. they start out holding up to 4 TVs and go up to 16. The multiswitch is going to run about $90.00 at Circuit City. Then you can run up to 4 TV's to it. Then run both ofyour wires from the satellite dish to the "in" ports on the multiswitch. At that point you can move your receivers or buy additional receivers for those areas.
If you don't want to purchase the multiswitch run both of the wires off of the Dual LNB (that's right it's called an LNB) to a central location with the rest of the wires. Mark the wires install a ground block to connect the dish wires to the TV wires and simply swap them as you move around the house.
It is imperitive that you have a dish with dual LNB's if you don't you cannot do more than one TV. You need to run both wires.
Also, make sure to use RG-6 cable. The only thing RG-59 is used for anymore is Closed circuit cameras. RG-6 has a wider bandwidth and sends information quicker.
If you don't want to purchase the multiswitch run both of the wires off of the Dual LNB (that's right it's called an LNB) to a central location with the rest of the wires. Mark the wires install a ground block to connect the dish wires to the TV wires and simply swap them as you move around the house.
It is imperitive that you have a dish with dual LNB's if you don't you cannot do more than one TV. You need to run both wires.
Also, make sure to use RG-6 cable. The only thing RG-59 is used for anymore is Closed circuit cameras. RG-6 has a wider bandwidth and sends information quicker.