diseqc switch for sky and hotbird? (2 receivers)

blackninja

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I'm thinking of pointing one dish at 28 East and another at 13 East, and feeding both into a diseqc switch.

However I'm a little confused as to what is meant by these switches not being compatible with Sky digiboxes. Could I still watch Sky on my digibox with the above setup, and both frequencies when my diseqc compatible reciever is connected?
 

rolfw

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The incompatiblity is that the Sky Digibox does not have DiseqC switching, as long as you put the 28.2 dish on the A port, the digibox will find it. You could put a quad or twin LNB on the Sjy dish. and have one cable to your digibox and the other to a diseqC switch along with the 13E dish, this could then be connected to the other receiver.

You can of course also do this on one dish.
 

blackninja

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Sorry to sound thick (again) but I've seen a setup with 2 dishes, one pointing to 13 East and the other to 28 East, and both fed into a diseqc switch (I'm guessing the 28 East dish goes to the A port). With the digibox connected the Sky Digital programming shows up, and with the diseqc receiver connected Hotbird 13 East shows plus, if I remember right, (FTA) 28 East. This seemed to be happening without the twin/quad LNB and extra cable. Have I got this right? (The two frequencies on the diseqc receiver are more for when, for example, I move the Sky dish to 5 East or 1 West).

rolfw said:
The incompatiblity is that the Sky Digibox does not have DiseqC switching, as long as you put the 28.2 dish on the A port, the digibox will find it. You could put a quad or twin LNB on the Sjy dish. and have one cable to your digibox and the other to a diseqC switch along with the 13E dish, this could then be connected to the other receiver.

You can of course also do this on one dish.
 

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If the FTA box has a loopthrough then you could problably have 2 LNB's going to a DiseqC switch (A to Astra2), one cable from the DiseqC to the FTA receiver and then attach the Skybox to the FTA boxes loopthrough. This works on my Topfield receiver, but I don't know if it will work on all other receivers.

Best to do as Rolf suggests though, i.e. let the Skybox have its own feed. This is what I now do.
 

rolfw

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If you don't have a constant feed to the Sky digibox, you may miss software updates, the loopthrough m,ay work as cjgall says, but not always.

Of course you can do it the way you suggest, but do you really want to be disconnecting and reconnection the cable at the rear of the receivers?

I see now that you may wish to move the Sky dish to 1W or 5E, perhaps you ought to be considering a motorised dish, why the objection to the second cable, is it a difficult run?
 

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I've had a look and because of the setup of where I live a second cable would be very difficult to run, partcularly for a relative novice. A diseqc switch seems the only practicable option.

So a diseqc switch wouldn't affect my viewing of 28 East on the Sky Digibox (if the dish to the 'A' port is pointed to that frequency)? I realise disconnecting and reconnecting cables might be a bit of a faff but with the winter closing in a switch saves me going out in the cold to move the dish around, as I've been doing previously. Plus I've found a really good deal on another dish.


rolfw said:
If you don't have a constant feed to the Sky digibox, you may miss software updates, the loopthrough m,ay work as cjgall says, but not always.

Of course you can do it the way you suggest, but do you really want to be disconnecting and reconnection the cable at the rear of the receivers?

I see now that you may wish to move the Sky dish to 1W or 5E, perhaps you ought to be considering a motorised dish, why the objection to the second cable, is it a difficult run?
 

rolfw

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If you have sufficient signal, then you can have a DiseqC switch at the dish, a single cable coming into the house and then an A+B or Smart Priority switch inside.
 

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Thanks for all your help. I get there in the end.

Could I use some kind of signal booster in addition to the indoor switch? Think I saw one in the shop recently. If I had sufficient signal would using an indoor switch allow me to change channels between both receivers if I connected both to the TV using two scart leads?
 

rolfw

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Forget the booster, it won't do anything, it is really down to the dish size and your location as to how good a signal you can achieve.

If you use a switch, then yes, you can have both receivers connected to the TV, but you will still only be able to use one at a time.
 

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Back again. Just set up the new dish, which took me a while, and I'm ready to attach the two dishes to the diseqc switch.

Just a few queries before I do. The new dish's LNB is labelled 'Single LNB' despite the fact that it was advertised as having a Universal LNB. Secondly the instructions for the switch state that the rear panel should be mounted on a pole 'not more than 1 metre from the LNBs'. Does this mean the two dishes should be no more than 2 metres apart (with the switch in the middle)? - mine are more like 3-4 metres apart (the dishes that is). Thirdly the instructions also state that I should connect the cable from my NEW satellite LNB to the part marked 'LNB A' and the cable from my existing dish LNB to 'LNB B' - I want to do it the other way round.

Should any of this matter?
Thanks for your help so far.
 

rolfw

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Take it all with a pinch of salt, have installed the switches several metres from the LNBs in the past. :)
 

blackninja

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Thanks again Rolf. So the fact that I'm using a single LNB rather than a Universal one shouldn't matter then?
 

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blackninja said:
Thanks again Rolf. So the fact that I'm using a single LNB rather than a Universal one shouldn't matter then?
Being single has nothing to do with it being universal, there are also twin and quad lnb's out there to which you can connect 2 or 4 receivers or switches. Most LNB's are universal and no doubt that the one you have is also.
 

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Single just refers to the number of LNB outputs on the LNB - as cjgall says

Universal is a reference to the frecquency range the LNB will receive - it will be universal, almost all are.
 

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Sorry to go back to an old post but I've been trying the loopthrough technique but it's getting a little annoying only being able to view half the sky digital channels.

Ideally I'd like the Sky digibox to be the 'master' receiver and show all the channels regardless of what channel the Smart receiver's showing; so I was thinking of buying one of these Smart Priority switches (don't know whether it's the same company or not).

Using this setup with the Smart receiver on and the Sky digibox off I'm guessing I can watch all the available channels on the Smart; but when I switch the Sky box on I'm hoping the signal on the Smart goes and I can view all the available Sky channels. Would that be the case with a Smart Priority Switch?
 

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blackninja said:
Using this setup with the Smart receiver on and the Sky digibox off I'm guessing I can watch all the available channels on the Smart; but when I switch the Sky box on I'm hoping the signal on the Smart goes and I can view all the available Sky channels. Would that be the case with a Smart Priority Switch?

Sounds about right, I only learnt about the Smart priority switch last week.
http://www.globalcom.co.uk/accesories/sps1.html
The 'smart' part will only work if your FTA receiver turns off its LNB when powered down - this should be the case hopefully, you connect the B input to your S*y box and the A to your FTA box. Normally control is over to the S*y box through port B, when the FTA box powers up the LNB it then takes control of the LNB and your S*y box won't see a thing. Moreover your dieseqc switch should have 28.2E on port A and 13E on B, which should default to A when not under diseqc control...

Something like this:

Sky-\ -----------------/ [A] 28.2E (-
-----SMART SPS1----Diseqc
FTA-/ [A]-----------------\ 13E (-

Cheers CTS
 

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Thanks. What about if the Sky Box was connected to SPS1 Port 'A'? Would it take priority over the other box (if that box was in SPS port :cool: with both boxes switched on? Would I be able to view all the Sky channels (rather than half as with the loopthrough technique) using this technique?

Thanks for the help so far.


closetosoton said:
Sounds about right, I only learnt about the Smart priority switch last week.
http://www.globalcom.co.uk/accesories/sps1.html
The 'smart' part will only work if your FTA receiver turns off its LNB when powered down - this should be the case hopefully, you connect the B input to your S*y box and the A to your FTA box. Normally control is over to the S*y box through port B, when the FTA box powers up the LNB it then takes control of the LNB and your S*y box won't see a thing. Moreover your dieseqc switch should have 28.2E on port A and 13E on B, which should default to A when not under diseqc control...

Something like this:

Sky-\ -----------------/ [A] 28.2E (-
-----SMART SPS1----Diseqc
FTA-/ [A]-----------------\ 13E (-

Cheers CTS
 

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blackninja said:
Thanks. What about if the Sky Box was connected to SPS1 Port 'A'? Would it take priority over the other box (if that box was in SPS port :cool: with both boxes switched on? Would I be able to view all the Sky channels (rather than half as with the loopthrough technique) using this technique? Thanks for the help so far.

If you followed the link, it tells you what to connect to which port: If you connected Sky to SPS1 port A, it wouldn't work. Since port A is the priority switched port, and if it didn't switch (i.e. powers LNB all the time) port B would not get a look in - although it would get half the channels depending on the selected polorisation of the $ky box. With my suggested technique you would get ALL the channels ALL the time - but not simultaneously, so long as you're watching/recording from one receiver at any one time you'll be OK.

A better solution as suggested previously would be a twin ouput LNB, keeping your installations more or less 'seperate':

SKY---------------------(- 28.2E [twin output lnb]
------------------------/
--------------------/(A)
FTA------------Diseqc
--------------------\(:cool:----------(- 13E

In this way you can simultaneously record/watch two channels completely independently of each other...

cheers cts
 

blackninja

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Sorry didn't see the link. Will have a look now.

Thanks for the help. Much appreciated.
 
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