Two Rx's One Antenna?

[joe645]

Is it possible to hook up two Viewsat Extreme Rx's to one Fortec Superstar antenna w/rotor, and still move the dish with either rx. Of course, one will always be off.

[Sadoun]

Yes you can. To do that you will need to slave the second receiver to 1st by using the loop out on the 1st receiver. One receiver will control the motor at a time.

[brentb636]

There may be a caveat in this notion. I've found some of the "loop out" connectors to be incorrectly implemented ( that means they don't work ). Before you plan any further, test your two Extreme's by slaving one to the other , on a fixed antenna system, and make sure that with one turned off, the slave can function normally.
I've run into one brand that doesn't pass thru the loop out reliably, so I thought you should test it first.

[wejones]

On the receivers I have used, ie Fortec Lifetime, Lifetime Ultra, and Mercury, if you use the passthru, which I do, you MUST leave the first receiver on. If you turn that receiver off, you lose all signal. This is even if that receiver isn't powering the LNB. What this means is that if you use the passthru, only the first receiver can actually control the dish. Every other receiver down the line can only tune in on the satellite/polarity that the first receiver is tuned to.

There are ways to deal with this, depending on exactly what you want to do, however with the receivers I have used, you cannot do it via the passthru (or loop out as Sadoun calls it), because generally nothing goes through that passthru from the second receiver to the dish.

I use the passthru method all the time, and am very happy with the results, but I do all the satellite control with the receivers that are upstream, not the receivers connected via the passthru.

[glen4cindy]

I have a Lifetime NA and a Lifetime Ultra. The NA is my primary and the Ultra is hooked up as slave.

As wejones said, the first receiver is always powered on, but I can use EITHER reciever to move the dish and watch channels. Using the front power button to put the primary into standby, I can watch any sat and any channel on my secondary reciever. I can then put the secondary into standby and use the primary to move the dish and watch channels.

The very first thing either reciever does is move the dish to the last sat and channel that was tuned before it was put into standby.

Maybe mixed brands will not allow what I have to work, but, my Fortec's work just fine independently while slaved together.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by glen4cindy

I have a Lifetime NA and a Lifetime Ultra. The NA is my primary and the Ultra is hooked up as slave.

As wejones said, the first receiver is always powered on, but I can use EITHER reciever to move the dish and watch channels. Using the front power button to put the primary into standby, I can watch any sat and any channel on my secondary reciever. I can then put the secondary into standby and use the primary to move the dish and watch channels.

The very first thing either reciever does is move the dish to the last sat and channel that was tuned before it was put into standby.

Maybe mixed brands will not allow what I have to work, but, my Fortec's work just fine independently while slaved together.

I guess I'm wrong then. ?!?!? Or at least very confused.
Since I can't get my Mercury working, my Ultra is my primary receiver, and I have other receivers conncted via the passthru, and I've never noticed any DiseqC type commands being able to make it through the passthru. If they would make it through, it would have messed me up by now, because I just have DiseqC on random settings on my #2 receiver. However I don't think my Ultra has the "standby" feature you mentioned, ie I'm 90% sure that it kills lnb power when the switch is off, but I'll check on that again. I do know that if I turn the ULTRA off via that switch, that everything downstream loses signal.

Anyway, this is interesting, and I'm surprised and confused. I'm going to have to experiment with this again. { Again, because I did this once before, with my Lifetime, because most analog IRDs retain LNB power when the unit is turned off, and I experimented to see if the Fortec Lifetime did that. It didn't, LNB power went off..... if I remember right..... but now I'm confused. }

EDIT: Well, thinking that new receivers might be different from the Ultra, I just checked my Mercury, and it turns off LNB power when you hit the up front power button, or switch it off via remote too, just like the Ultra and Lifetime. I also checked again, and no DiseqC commands go through the passthru of my Ultra. So I'm even more confused. Either your NA model has a different type of standby, or I'm confused about just what you are doing. ....... It just now occurred to me that you never said that you were using the passthru .... ie perhaps you're using a non-DC-blocked splitter prior to both receivers??? If you're doing that, I can understand how it might work, but it's really risky to run without DC-blocks. It's probably OK provided you never have both receivers on at the same time, but strange things could happen if you aren't careful.
Anyway, are you using the passthru or a splitter? Are you using DC-blocks? Still confused on this one. :-)

[glen4cindy]

I am using the passthru, with my NA as primary.

I can press the front panel power button or the remote control power button, and the standby light comes on.

I can then control the dish via the Ultra hooked to the passthru.

If I turn the NA back on it regains control of the dish and the dish moves where the NA tells it to. When the NA is on, the ultra cannot move the dish. I've never tried to use both receivers at the same time, so I am not sure how the Ultra would act if the NA is on, I would think that it would be limited to whatever transponders were the same polarity.

It may also be that my arrangement would not function if the Ultra was hooked up first, I don't know and do not intend to try becauase it would be too hard to reverse them.

I cannot turn the rear switch off on the NA. If I do, the Ultra does not recieve any signal at all.

Hope this clears up how my setup is working.

[wejones]

Originally Posted by glen4cindy

I am using the passthru, with my NA as primary.

I can press the front panel power button or the remote control power button, and the standby light comes on.

I can then control the dish via the Ultra hooked to the passthru.

If I turn the NA back on it regains control of the dish and the dish moves where the NA tells it to. When the NA is on, the ultra cannot move the dish. I've never tried to use both receivers at the same time, so I am not sure how the Ultra would act if the NA is on, I would think that it would be limited to whatever transponders were the same polarity.

It may also be that my arrangement would not function if the Ultra was hooked up first, I don't know and do not intend to try becauase it would be too hard to reverse them.

I cannot turn the rear switch off on the NA. If I do, the Ultra does not recieve any signal at all.

Hope this clears up how my setup is working.

Thanks.

I think I was able to reproduce what you describe with my ULTRA, however I don't think it's a good idea to do it.

I noticed that you didn't say whether you were using a DC-block, so I figured that that is the only difference in our setups. So I turned off my Ultra (front button), and I took out my DC-block. Bingo... I was then able to get DiseqC AND DC voltage through the passthru. One big factor with MY setup was that I'm also using a DiseqC switch downstream of my ULTRA, and that switch needs power to function, so when I turn off my Ultra, it kills the switch, and since I have a DC-block between the ULTRA and my TWINHAN, the Twinhan can't turn on the DiseqC switch, so I got nothing. When I took out the DC-block, the Twinhan could turn on the DiseqC switch, and everything worked. Also, even with the DC-block, if I bypassed the DiseqC switch, signal still went through the passthru.

I was pretty sure that there was a built-in DC-block in the Ultra, because onec I checked the passthru for voltage while the Ultra was running, and I didn't detect any voltage at the passthru. However either I was wrong on my previous test, or else the DC-block only works one way, or perhaps it isn't enabled when in standby mode????

I have a schematic for the Ultra, however the schematic doesn't include the passthru, because it is inside the Sharp bs2f7vz0614 tuner, and I can't find a schematic of that.

Another puzzle just occurred to me. In the the test I did today, I demonstrated that while the Ultra is running, the Twinhan cannot change ports on my DiseqC switch. I think this means that DiseqC commands are blocked, because I don't think that the Ultra is sending continual commands to the switch, ie I think it only sends the commands when you change channels or something like that, and that the switch then stays in whatever state it was put in. So it seems like the Twinhan should have been able to change which port the switch was on if the passthru lets DiseqC through. So either the passthru blocks DiseqC while the Ultra is on, or else the DC-block blocks the DiseqC, which doesn't seem likely.


Anyway, thanks. You've demonstrated that I was completely wrong about how these passthru's work, however I am still too nervous to try what you are doing, ie running without a DC-block. I just don't know what would happen if the downstream receiver is trying to send one LNBF voltage, and the other receiver is sending the other voltage. That just sounds like something you'd want to avoid. I'm even nervous about running without a DC-block when the Ultra is turned off, because I'm not sure what happens when these components get power from the outside, when turned off.

Anyway, an interesting topic.

[glen4cindy]

I can see your concern regarding the LNB voltage.

One thing that will never happen in my house is only one STB will be in use at a time. I am the only one who "plays" with them so my family will not ever turn either of them on.

You are also correct about this being an interesting topic. I always learn something new when reading on this forum. It is by far one of the best.

Thanks Sadoun!