[MatthewH]

I have a new home that is being built and have a few questions about wiring before the drywall hanging begins. We are currently using Dish Network and we are planning on purchasing HDTV's to put on the walls in three bedrooms, master bathroom, living room, and office. What is the most feasible way to do this... I am currently using a DISH 722 and I know that is can send a SDTV signal to a second TV. My initial thought was this.


DISH 722 DVR: HDTV signal to living room and SDTV signal to office.


DISH VIP 222: HDTV signal to master bedroom and SDTV signal to master bathroom.


DISH VIP 222: HDTV signal to bedroom #2(daughter's room) and SDTV signal to bedroom #3 (guest room).


Now for just a couple questions.


1. Will I have to purchase the additonal DISH receivers (VIP 222's) or does DISH tack on a $5.00 charge for usage of the additional receivers.


2. With regards to running cables, what will give me that best quality picture on the SDTV. By looking at the back of the receiver it looks like you have to use a composite cable to hook up to the second TV. (I was hoping to use component.)


I dont want to have the drywall hung and then realize that I have things wired wrong.

 

[biker19]

1. ask Dish

2. you can use just about anything for SD - won't make much diff


Don't fixate on getting things right just for your current Dish set up. Plan for real long term. You'll want coax and a CAT5/6 drop to every TV location from a central distribution point - somewhere near the entrance of the utilities in the house. You may want to go OTA or cable later and maybe IPTV will become reality in the longer term.

 

[MatthewH]

Thanks for your help.

 

[Rammitinski]

Dish's standard installation procedure involves only running RF coax out from the 2nd tuner to the TV, so you might want to have some really long RCA cords installed instead. The composite will be a little better than the RF.

 

[MatthewH]

I am writing down all of my wiring runs now and will use the composite cables for the SDTV signal. I will probably go ahead and do an extra run of component wires along side the composite in the event we decide to add an HDTV receiver to those rooms.


Has there been any talk about a HDTV receiver than can send two different HD signals to two rooms without using a splitter. (ie. watching two seperate programs in two different rooms at the same time.

 

[my65ffrcobra]

I would run 3 coax cables to where each hd receiver is. One for the input, one for ota hd antenna and one for the output to the 2nd tv in sd. And I would put 2 coax runs to the 2nd tv, one for input from dish receiver and one for ota hdtv, or the second will be needed if you decide to put a reciever there in the future.


I am sure you know the advantages of ota, if you are in range of the towers, more hd channels, and there has been several times I have been recording three things at once. And Dish didn't have fox in hd but I picked it up ota, but I heard they fixed this.


Its a total bummer that the 2nd tv won't output hd. And it drives me nuts that the 2nd tv has to run on one channel rather than an input. My harmony remote/tv occasionally has problems changing from the dvd player to antenna A then channel 75 or whatever it is. Hopefully using your composite output for the 2nd tv fixes this. If you are using the composite I would imagine you would have to use rca cables as well for the sound. When/if they ever make that 2nd tv hd I would imagine it would be HDMI, if it is component, you would still need the rca cables.


I guess to make it really future proof you would need to run RCA, Component, composite, coax, and HDMI from tv1-tv2 What a joke, not feasible in my house since they would be 100ft runs.