Splitting a satellite cable?

[GrunchCan]

Anybody out there know anything about satellites?

I have DirecTV at home, and my dish has 3 outputs. One of the outputs goes to the bedroom, and one goes to the family room where it's hooked up to a TiVo. There's one extra line that's not hooked up, because we can't get it to the family room without tearing up floors, etc. (The line that does run to the TiVo runs over existing cable in the walls)

But my TiVo has dual-inputs, and it really sucks that I can't have two lines. Frequently I want to watch football while recording poker or something. The TiVo is capable of doing this, if it has 2 wires plugged in to it. But I can't do it becasue I can't get that second wire to the TiVo. So I have to pick between football and poker.

I tried getting a splitter type thing, but it didn't work. The TiVo complained about the second input being from the same LNB as the first input. It said basically that it couldn't tune the 1 LNB to 2 different channels at the same time. Ok, so I get that.

But there's no way I can get that second line physically in through my walls. Is there anything else I can do? Like some kind of multiplexing thing, where the signal from 2 LNB's are shoved down 1 wire, and then split off again at the TiVo?

I don't know much about satellite signals. Anybody know how to do what I'm trying to do?

Thanks a lot!

[shadow29]

bump, cuz I've got the same question.

[Forbin]

What you need is something called a stacker.

Check out http://www.9thtee.com/dssstuff.htm . Assuming you do not have High-Def directv, then the section titled 'DSS Signal Stacker/Destacker for Single Dual-LNB Dish' applies to you. I know your dish has 3 outputs, but ignore the third one (to your bedroom) and look at it as 2 outputs you are trying to get to the living room on a single wire. As long as you don't have High-Def ignore the link about 'Triple LNB Dish'.

Essentially you need one of the stackers and one of the dual-destackers. You hook 2 dish outputs up to one side of the stacker and hook your existing interior single cable up to the other. At the other end you hook the single cable to one end of the dual-destacker and run 2 wires from the other side to your two directivo inputs.

Alternately, in place of a dual-destacker you could get a suitable splitter and 2 single destackers.

Note: this is not cheap, but probably cheaper than ripping up your floors and/or walls.

[GrunchCan]

Awesome! Thanks a lot!

Holy canoli, you weren't kidding when you said it wasn't cheap. Guess I picked a hell of a time to be on a downswing!

This is exactly what I was looking for. I think. Thanks again.