Archived from groups: alt.video.ptv.tivo (
More info?)
>I have a Hughes DirecTIVO unit with two tuners. I am moving to a newly
>built apartment unit that has a DirecTV satellite already installed and
>wired to each room. This is nice and all, however, this is good for a
>single tuner. Is there ANY way to get the 2nd tuner going without having to
>run a 2nd line from the satellite?
Yes, but it's often expensive, and it requires installing extra
equipment at the dish or at an upstream "multiswitch".
To do this, you need a "stacker" system. This takes the independent
signal feeds from two LNBs on a dish (or from two outputs of a
multiswitch), frequency-shifts one of the feeds and multiplexes the
two onto a single cable. You then need a dual-output "de-stacker" to
feed the two tuners on your receiver/recorder from a single cable.
The cost is nontrivial - figure around $100 for the stacker and $100
for a dual de-stacker, speaking very roughly.
Some buildings are already wired up with a stacked feed. It's popular
in apartment and office buildings, because you can amplify and split
the "stacked" signal and feed numerous outlets with it - you don't
need a bunch of cascaded multiswitches. In such large installations
it's cheaper than using multiswitches. In fact, there are some
special-purpose satellite receivers which have built-in single-tuner
destackers (or, extra-wide-frequency-range tuners, which adds up to
the same thing).
Check with your apartment manager, and see if the DirecTV feed
provided to you is a standard one, or a "stacked" feed. If the
latter, you'll need a de-stacker to use it, and you might as well buy
a dual-output destacker and run both of your tuners.
If it's a standard single-receiver feed, from a multiswitch, then the
answer is 'no' - you cannot run two tuners from this single feed
without having the setup malfunction.
--
Dave Platt <dplatt@radagast.org> AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page:
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