satellite dish to 2 receivers

I know this does not come under general electrics, but does anyone know if 2 sky receivers in diff. rooms can run independantly, off one satellite dish with a single LNB. I've seen some gadgets on a site eg. "priority switches" but not sure if the receivers can be used independantly. I know it'sa long shot, but any advice would be appreciated.

I believe if you're talking sky receivers then they come with dual LNBs if you have a standard minidish, though don't quote me.

IF you have a sky+ box, you will need to get a quad LNB, if one is not already installed with that.

The LNB is powered and controlled from one receiver. It is possible to use a single LNB with two receivers with the right kit, but then the secondary receiver will only get some channels, depending on what the main one is doing.

Alternatively you get a LNB designed to run two receivers, which has outputs for two independantly switched and powered cables.

Yep, to run independantly, you need a twin or quad LNB, these essentially turn your dish into '2' or '4' seperate dishes.

Of course, you will then need two subscriptions to view channels at both locations.

Here is the reasoning...

An LNB receives the signal, and passes it to the reciever. The LNB cant receive all frequencies (channels) at once, as there are far too many frequencies to look at in one go.

The receiver tells the LNB what it wants to receive by sending a combination of:

12v no tone
18v no tone
12v 22kHz tone
18v 22kHz tone

The voltage change tells the LNB to look either on the Horizontal or Vertical Polarization, and the tone change tells the LNB to look at either High or Low band.

Also, A Quad LNB is differnt from a Quattro LNB. A quad is 4 seperate LNB's in one case, giving 4 outputs capable of delivering all channels. A Quattro has 4 outputs, but each output is one of the four above combinations. (these are used to feed multiswitches for use in large blocks of flats).

You can buy octo-LNBs too, presumably people who have a house large enough to require 8 Sky boxes live in posh areas where dishes are frowned upon, thus needing to cram all into the one dish.

AdamW said:

You can buy octo-LNBs too, presumably people who have a house large enough to require 8 Sky boxes live in posh areas where dishes are frowned upon, thus needing to cram all into the one dish.

Click to expand...

When you get to that size, a quad or quattro with a multi switch would be the best bet! You can feed the terrestrial analouge and digital sigals into it aswell as DAB and FM aswell, these can then be fed down a single coax to each flat. Each flat can then distribute this how they want (or can have more than one feed from the multi switch).

I have seen a block of flats that also fed the CCTV picture of the front door through the system - your intercom beeps, you flick onto, say, channel 6 to see who is there. (i think it was the same camera that also gave the picture to the screens on the intercoms.)

Wouldn't there be a problem with having satellite and terrestrial on the same coax? Or does the multiplexer sort out the LNB signals? Otherwise you would end up with the TV aerial corroding surely?

When I installed all mine I ran 3 separate coaxes in the wall: 1 for satellite, 1 for cable and 1 for terrestrial (the dish was fitted by a Sky man, but he didn't mind leaving me with just a really long co-ax - I suppose it meant he didn't have to worry about fastening it down!). I have these feeding two separate plates, one with F-connector (cable) + aerial, one with just F-connector (satellite). I now think it would have looked better if I had used a 2-gang blanking plate and drilled holes to fit 3 separate connectors (from Maplin or similar). OK, so I don't ever see it, but I know it's there. I also wish I had installed a phone socket back there too. I have heard that new places are built with an extra phone socket in the living room by the aerial socket, presumably for set-top boxes.