Cable vs satellite

Mr. Presentable

In the beginning, cable TV was from a communal ariel. Why can a neighbourhood not use a communal dish for satellite (SKY for example)?

chalkitdown

You can, but from what I remember it has to be less than eight households.

Kensington

The aerial is effectively a "dumb" receiver. It simply passes down anything within the frequency range for which it is intended to be used for.

A satellite dish is more complex. Part of the tuning is done in the LNB at the end of the dish arm with the receiver selecting from one of four bands for the LNB to tune to. Clearly, if your receiver wants one band and your neighbour wants another, you've got a problem! Therefore you can't split an IF sat feed - your satellite receiver needs it's own direct control with the LNB. Same reason Sky+ needs two cables from your dish.

ted1

a multi switch would allow many users to use the same dish. For multiple sets it'd be fairly cheap.

Red Alert

That's how it's done in apartments - all perfectly legit. It also allows people to choose Freesat as well.