A tale of two boxes

[porterspet]

Hi,Sorry,second question.I have 3 dishes on the roof connecting to one cable through the house,to one tv.I would like to use two boxes through one tv set.I have been trying to find a way of "switching" between the two without having to put in an extra cable and without having to change over connections everytime.There must be other people out there who use more than one box and have come up against this problem and solved it!

[BGonaSTICK]

Three dishes into one cable - it sounds like you're running with a four-way DiSEqC switch - do you know if that's right?

Does each dish have just one LNB? Where are the three dishes pointing?

When you say 'use two boxes' do you mean two satellite receivers?

I take it you have two satellite receivers at the moment? Can you tell us what they are?

[bigtee]

If the two receivers have scart connections and if the TV also has a scart connection, it's a simple case of using a 2/3 way scart adaptor (multi-scart) connected to the TV and the scarts from the 2 receivers go into the (multi-scart) adaptor.

[BGonaSTICK]

Ahh, is that what you meant - how to physically connect two satellite receivers to the TV?

If so, you may find that if you daisy chain them, you end up with a better quality picture than by using a cheap multi-SCART adaptor.

If you mean how to have two receivers running on one coax from your three dishes, it's not so simple. You can try looping the coax through one of the boxes to the other, but the best way is to run a second cable to a second DiSEqC switch and into three new twin LNBs.

[porterspet]

I am a bit new to this,so I'm not sure I totally understand the answers.I want to run two receivers under my tv and be able to use one at a time without changing all the connections.I subscribe to Nova here in Crete and have one of their boxes,which are fixed to receive only the channels they broadcast.I also have a normal FTA receiver which allows me to get the other channels from a couple of other satellites.I want to be able to change from one receiver to the other effortlessly.Am I being too optimistic?

[BGonaSTICK]

Do either of your satellite receivers have SCART connections, and if so, how many? Which connections are you having to swap over?

[porterspet]

Both boxes have 2 scart sockets.I change all connections over only because I presumed I would have too.

[BGonaSTICK]

OK, I'm still not quite sure what you're swapping over, but assuming that it's just the connectivity to the TV and the coax from the dishes that's the problem (and that you only have one SCART socket on your TV) try this:

Both satellite boxes have mains power. One or more might have a connection to the phone line. Fine. Don't know if either have traditional RF cabling, but will assume not. If this is wrong, let me know.

Now, take a fully connected SCART lead from the TV SCART socket at the back of receiver 1 to the SCART socket on the TV.

Take a fully connected SCART lead from the TV SCART socket at the back of receiver 2, and plug it into the VCR SCART socket on receiver 1.

If this doesn't work, swap the SCART connections on receiver 1.

Now, when you want to swap receivers for viewing, you should be able to achieve this by putting the receiver that's not in use into standby, thereby giving control of the SCART connection to the receiver that's still on.

Now, I can't ascertain how your three dishes connect to your one cable, but assuming that there's a four-way DiSEqC switch at the junction of these three dishes, that both of your receivers are DiSEqC-enabled, and that you're swapping the satellite coax connection over when swapping boxes too, then a simple A-B switch could be employed to save you unscrewing the 'F' connector and screwing it back into the other box every time.

If this is the situation, you could also use a 'priority' switch to automate this - as long as your receivers drop into 'deep' standby - where the power supply to the coax is turned off when in standby. You will have to test this yourself. If only one of them does this, you can still use a priority switch, but you will either have to take a 12v switching supply from the back of the offending box, or pick up pin 8 from the SCART socket to signal the switch.

Priority switches work the same way as the A-B switches, but they're simply switched by the receivers themselves.

An example of such a priority switch is the Global SPS1. I have one - they're very useful.

STICK

[porterspet]

Thanks,I'll work my way through the explanation and see what happens.