DIRECTV - Contract's up - Wiring Question

[TWG1572]

I bought a house two years ago, it had DirecTV installed already. Since our landline provider (Frontier) bundled with them, I figured it was a no brainer to keep the existing setup and just do a two year contract. That's up in June, so I'm about to do the whole "I'm leaving" thing and see how they respond. It helps that Frontier is now bundling with Dish, so I have some negotiating leverage.

Anyway, the house came wired with two coax cables to every reciever. The tech told my wife why, but she didn't understand it other than it was "required" for a HD feed. What irritates me is that my house has internal wiring for one coax into every room, with a Directv "endorsed/approved" splitter power booster in the basement. Directv did their usual and hung the second coax on the sides of the house and just drilled holes into the walls wherever they needed to bring it in. Looks like crap inside and out. I bought it like that, and now want to get rid of it.

Does anyone know why I needed the two coax cables? I'm running a standard HDDVR on the main TV, the other just has a reciever on it. Is it something to do with my dish? Mine isn't round like the others I see, it's more oval.

If I sign another contract with them, I want to make certain I get rid of this setup and they just use the internal coax. Is it possible to run HD and a DVR on one coax cable? If so, what setup/hardware should I be asking for when I negotiate? I definitly want the DVR option, and am thinking of the Genie.

 

[NutBucket]

Two coax feeds per box enables the dual tuners in each DVR to record independent channels. I don't believe you need two feeds per receiver unless you want dual tuner functionality.

Oval dish is required for HD. And while the Genie is nice I'm not sure how the wiring for that works.

 

[Zivic]

all current wiring is a single coax with a single wire multi-switch

 

[TWG1572]

Awesome. Now I just need to talk them into a free Genie.

 

[purbeast0]

Two coax feeds per box enables the dual tuners in each DVR to record independent channels. I don't believe you need two feeds per receiver unless you want dual tuner functionality.

Oval dish is required for HD. And while the Genie is nice I'm not sure how the wiring for that works.

with fios i only have 1 coax going into my house from outside, and 1 coax going to each cable box, and i definitely can use dual tuning to record 2 things at once.

you don't need 2 coax cables to cable boxes. i ran coax through my house myself in the walls to 6 different locations. i have an 8way splitter in my closet. i have 1 wire going from the fios modem to the splitter, and 1 wire coming from outside into the modem. then from the splitter it goes to a bunch of locations. everything works fine.

 

[boomhower]

I believe that was the old way, the new stuff certainly doesn't need two coax. All of my secondary HD box's are only single coax, same with the Genie in the living room.

 

[Zivic]

FWIW, next gen clients won't even need a coax. They will simply need to be powered and connected to the display. They will receive their programming via wireless connection from the "genie"

 

[smitbret]

The 2nd cable is necessary for DVR, not HD on the Legacy 2-wire system. DirecTV officially ceased all Legacy installs a few weeks ago.

Depending on what kind of customer you've been and/or whether you have the Protection Plan you should have an upgrade that includes a Genie and up to 3 clients to be installed either free, $19.95 or $49.

The newer SWM system let's all signals come into each room and off the dish (in normal circumstances) on one piece of RG-6 coax. This includes all ethernet signals as well. The exception is you hjave more than 8 tuners in the household and then they'd have to run 4 cables from the dish into the house. The drops to each room are still just 1 cable.

You'll want to keep your HD DVR in the system with the Genie. Don't replace it with a client. That way you'll keep your recordings and because of whole-home DVR the playlists from both the HDDVR and the new Genie will integrate into one playlist that's shared at all locations. It's smooth. You'll be able to record 7 things at once, and depending on your model of HDDVR you'll have up to 1.5TB of storage space. They'll dump the 2nd coax to the HD DVR once the new system is installed.

Ask for the Cinema Connection Kit, too. Since you need the SWM installed to work with the Genie, they will waive all of the $99 for that if you resist even a little.

 

[smitbret]

FWIW, next gen clients won't even need a coax. They will simply need to be powered and connected to the display. They will receive their programming via wireless connection from the "genie"

Allegedly.