Cable/satellite wiring & tuners

[Dean]

From another thread.

Originally Posted by sperry

The wiring is working great! Thanks again for all the help. We keep flirting with switching to satellite, but have yet to pull the trigger because we don't want tuner boxes for all the TVs we rarely watch.

While I cannot speak for HD, I assume they haven't done something stupid in that conversion. Needing a tuner or box for each TV is not required no matter how much they would like to convince you it is.

In most cases, you only need as many tuners as you want to watch and record simultaneously and RF remotes. Almost all satellite boxes output on a specific channel kind of like VCRs had a 3/4 switch. The TVs in other rooms just need to tune to that channel to watch what that tuner is outputting.

There is nothing preventing 4 TVs from "watching" the same tuner.

It is all in the cable routing and if needed, using signal combiners to put multiple outputs from different sources on a single cable.

Doing this right also eliminates the "we can't watch that in the bedroom, it is on the living room DVR." issue.

I would guess you would want 3 or 4 tuners and the ability to record 2 of those at the same time. In either case, that means 2 boxes for as many TVs as you have.

Depending on what cable you already have in the wall, you may not need any additional except between the dish and the tuners. Not I did not say dish and your cable distribution box. The outputs from the tuners will get routed there and distributed on the existing cable.

[sperry]

I think I know the basic ins and outs of my options when it comes to cable vs. sat. My house is in fact properly wired w/ a wiring closet that would allow central distribution of either cable, or raw sat signal, or decoded sat signal from a box to any room in my house, thanks to the help I got from Kavid mucking around in my attic helping me pull coax & Cat5. However, none of that solves the problem I have with satellite due to the way I want to watch TV.

With cable, I can use the TV in the garage to flip through all the channels provided by basic/extended analog cable service. This costs me nothing on top of the service I'm already paying for, and I have to buy no additional equipment.

With satellite, either I buy a tuner box for the garage, or watch whatever the one sat tuner is outputting and go inside every time I want to change the channel, or pay $500 for an RF remote. Either way, I'm buying at least one extra tuner box, and one extra box subscription; or two of each if I don't want to have to watch the same thing Lisa's watching in the living room.

No amount of clever wiring is going to decode that sat signal into the 70 or so analog channels that my existing TVs' tuners are able to tune to that are available on my feed from Charter.

The real question is whether or not you still "inadvertently" get all the basic/expanded channels on the wire when you have a cable internet subscription and nothing else. They used to (10+ years ago) just install a crappy signal filter on the wire that was easily removable on the premises, making it a cinch to get free basic cable w/ just an internet subscription. I would guess in more recent neighborhoods, those filters are installed off the premises or the signal is sent per-address, making it impossible to circumvent. Ideally, I'd like sat for the HD TV, and cable internet w/ free basic cable for the TVs I rarely watch in the bedroom/garage/etc.

[Dean]

Most dual tuner Sat boxes come with at least 1 RF remote, and they do output to analog channels, so what you are describing should be possible without spending any more money than the number of tuners you want.

So if you can live with 2 tuners, you only need 1 dual tuner box which should come with at least 1 RF remote and I'm sure extras are cheap on eBay if you want them.

[cody]

I'm really torn too. I love Charter internet and no boxes required for the secondary TV's, but not my DVR box and my Crazy bill that I have to fight tooth and nail to keep at $140 every month. I'm thinking of doing a phone/satelite/DSL package with ATT but then I only get 1.5Mbps instead of 5 with Charter.

[zpeed]

Dish Network have dual tuner so you can watch 2 separate channels. Direct TV only have single tuner. I use Redbox DVD rental for my new movies.

[DaveWRX]

I have dish network. Only one box but it's hooked up to both tvs and I get my shows recoreded on either one. And if your worryed about Internet, dish also offers it as well

[bigrobwoot]

I have AT&T, and I like it way more than charter. Charter was the only cable option for so long that they have horrible/no customer service. With AT&T, my roommate and I are paying I think an extra $10/mo over when we had charter, including the 2 boxes in each of our rooms. The good part is, that includes DVR that you can watch from any box, but you can only set recordings from the main box. The bad part is, our Internet is just barely noticably slower. I don't know what the speeds were before and after, but I can tell it's just a touch slower. Not enough to effect my browsing, and my computer is too slow for PC games anyway.

[cody]

Rob, You have that Uverse thing?

[100_Percent_Juice]

What I really like about the Uverse DVR is that anywhere you have a cable jack in the house, you can plug your box in, and now you also have internet connection. That would save you from having to run Ethernet through your entire house.

[cody]

They don't offer Uverse in my area but the lady said that they do offer 3meg DSL now which is up from the 1.5 they've always indicated previously. However they only guarantee 1.5.