Splitting sky signal...

ballybranach

Does anyone know is it possible to connect a Sky Box & a Free to Air Box to the same dish

watty

You need a Quad (4 output) LNB and separate coax each tuner input.

Or for large numbers of receivers (9 to 1000) a Quattro LNB and multiswitches.

snaps

watty wrote: »

You need a Quad (4 output) LNB and separate coax each tuner input.

Or for large numbers of receivers (9 to 1000) a Quattro LNB and multiswitches.

Thats funny Watty im sure earlier today you stated in another thread you can split a LNB feed!!!!!!?????? Im messing with you.

You can split a single feed but one receiver will only work at one time (Same as using the loop through on the back of a non sky box)

watty

Ha ha

Some receivers can be damaged by feeding via split depending on the design of the 13V/18V switch. Most should be fine.

There are a few satellite services even in Analogue only days that used only one polarity and one band (most then only Low, then called Standard or High, then called Telecom) and even in Digital days only one band & Polarity... you can find them on lyngsat.com Not just Ka-Sat actually.

But 28E (sky/Freesat), Astra 19E, Hotbird 13E all use all combinations of band and polarisation, so the coax can't be split, unless you use a Quattro. A Quattro has each output as LH, LV, HH and HV and ignores 22kHz tone and 13V/18V switching. Then to "split" signal, all FOUR cables are split each time for one receiver/satellite/Switch. Usually the final sets of four coax go to a Mulitswitch, which can have typically 16 tuners on it. A Multiswitch combines the four Quattro feeds and simulates a universal LNB. So A single dish can feed over 1000 receivers with just four coax from it. If you need less than 5 feeds, a Quad is best. For 5 to 8, a Octo can be used, but if there is ever a likelyhood of more than 4 PVRs or whatever combination that needs more than 8, a Quattro and Multiswitch is best. A four satellite feeds x 16 tuners (i.e. up to 8 PVRs) Multiswitch is about €250. It's easy to expand later in increments of 16. You can use 1 to 4 dishes to feed it with up to 4 quattros. If the satellites suit you can have multiple Quattro on a single 80cm Triax.

90/95cm Triax feeding multiswitch
That was experiment of VSAT on 23.5 as well as 28E, 19E and 13E.
It's now set for 28E, 19E, 13E and 9E
(28E is most west and highest and 13E or 9E is most East and lowest due to dish Mirrors the signal direction)
Dish aligned on 16E



Anything with a heavy VSAT content will generally only use one band and polarisation as you can't use the Transmit link polarisation on Receive and two receive bands would need an LNB not usual on ODU for VSAT, hence TV tends to use the same band and polarisation as the VSAT receive.

Ka-Sat has to use the same polarisation and band for a whole spot or else the satellite would be a lot more expensive and complicated. Neighbouring spots on Ka-Sat, WildBlue, ViaSat1 etc have to be either different frequency band or different polarisation or both to avoid interference as the spots actually overlap nearly 30% to 50%. It's been proven to fill an arbitrary map you only need four colours... so naturally the simplest and cheapest and lowest interference scheme is that each spot has one of the four possible combinations of band and polarisation.