DirecTV Tivo Multi wire switch

[Cahillj]

I am in the process of finishing my basement and am running electric and A/V cables so I can add a second R-10 to the media room with an eventual switch to HD as money becomes available. Right now I have a Hughes SD and an H21 both on two coax cables. I have the 5 lnb dish with 4 wires coming in the house. My question is how can the switch help me? Don't I still need two cable plugged in the back of the DVR to record two at once?

[WK-Michael]

With the R10s, the SWM really won't help. It's basically not compatible with your units - you'll need continue to use a 6x8 or just the straight cables for those units.

Technically, you could use the legacy ports from a SWM, but that really won't help much here.

[Cahillj]

How many cables need to come into the 6X8 splitter? As it stands now I think there are three or four. I only need two ore for a total of 6 outputs.

[WK-Michael]

That multiswitch is backward compatible, so, depending on the dish, it can work with as few as two.

[Cahillj]

It has three incoming now on a 3X4. Will the three incoming support six outgoing? Or do I need more incoming to the 6x8?

[WK-Michael]

The third should be OTA - not satellite, right? The 6x8 can't do OTA.

Your first post says you have a 5LNB dish. If that's right, then you need four cables going to that multiswitch.

[Cahillj]

Actually I just looked again and see the following configuration coming in the house. The HD dish has a multiple of cables coming down and in the basement. The problem is when the install was done right after the house was built the tech had to run two additional lines for the the tivo boxes we had. We neglected to tell the builders subcontractor we needed two coax cables in each tv room so they assumed we used cablevision and only needed one. The ran the cables after we moved in and didn't use a true splitter. It seems they just put a 4X4 junction port (looks like a splitter) with two going in and two going out. All of this occurrs as the cables come into the house.

I'll have to look at the schematics a bit better and see how the wires run. I really don't want to call DirecTV and have them come out and do something I know I am capable of doing myself.

[WK-Michael]

Either way, none of those units except the H21 are SWM compatible, so you can't double-up streams in one cable for these.

[Cahillj]

Either way, none of those units except the H21 are SWM compatible, so you can't double-up streams in one cable for these.

No but what I can do then is get the 6X8 splitter and run up to 4 tivo's or 8 non two tuner units right?

[WK-Michael]

Right - that'll work.