Direct tv question

[rving4us]

For 17 yrs we have used an 18 in dish and our receivers from the house with no problem. Recently we changed over to HD slim line dish for the rv like the one on the house. We are going full time as soon as the house sells. My questions ( several) are, instead of running 2 lines from the dish, can I run 1 line to a splitter then 2 lines out to the receivers? The rv is wired for separate lines to the living room and bedroom. just trying to get away from 2 lines running across the rv site. I know about the SWM setup, my question is it more difficult aligning the dish for the SWM set up compared to the dual LNB?
Thanks,
Cary

[mikestock]

is it more difficult aligning the dish for the SWM set up compared to the dual LNB?

All the same. Just need a different signal meter if you use one. No more precision needed.

[Big_Katuna]

You don't "have" to run two wires. If you only run one, then you can't watch channel A and record channel B. You also have to reconfigure your sat box so you don't get error messages.

[Bobbo]

If you have a SWM LNB, you can do this. If you don't have a SWM LNB, you have to run 2 wires from the antenna to either the SWM or the multiswitch.

[gatorcq]

Don't forget the "Power Inserter" which is required.

[Big_Katuna]

The Genie now that it is wifi is tempting. My hangup is that if your mother unit fails you are out of luck until you get a new box.

[donn0128]

If its time, I highly recomend you upgrade to a Genie and one wireless slave(remote). It is so simple, one coax from dish to power inserter.

[Big_Katuna]

I recently upgraded to the latest SWM dish and receivers. You can run one wire (that's all you CAN run) from the dish to the RV. I use the factory cable input which comes out in my AV shelf. It connects to an 8 way SWM splitter which the power inserter also plugs into which is required to power the LNB. The splitter lets you connect to your SWM receivers. I have two HD DVRs and one standard HD box I use the factory cabling to the bedroom and outside.

I really like the setup. My old HD setup used two wires from the dish to the DVR so I could record and watch. Now I can record two shows and watch three on one wire.

The dish is just as easy to setup as my old single SD. The only gotcha is to not turn on your boxes until the LNB is connected and powered up or the boxes fail power up testing.

[aslakson]

It depends on the LNB you have on your DirecTV dish. If it's an SWM lnb, then you can in fact use a SWM splitter to feed the two receivers with one coax each. And you'll have just one coax going to the dish from the SWM power inserter. The splitter MUST be a DirecTV SWM splitter, and goes between the SWM power inserter and the receivers.

If it's not an SWM LNB, then you'll also need a SWM8 switch, which takes multiple coax feeds from the dish and does all the magic to send it all back up one coax to the receivers. The SWM8 switch requires a different power inserter than the one used for just the SWM dish.

AND - the total number of tuners amongst the receivers can't be more than 8 - for example, a two-tuner DVR, or maybe the new 5-tuner Genies. If you have DVRs, you will have multiple tuners in each receiver.

It's probably possible to get switches that support more than 8 tuners, but that would (IMHO) be serious overkill in an RV. 🙂

al

[Gooding__R]

I think for HD you have to use the 2 wire system or you will lose the HD. I have never noticed the difference between HD and non-HD. I have the 1 wire system in my MH.