DirecTV SWM Setup

[tailgateco]

Hey! I'm new here as a member but i've read a lot of threads on here and gotten a lot of help.


I have a SWM question.

I own a business that sets up tailgates for people at college football games. We setup up tents, tables, chairs, etc. We also provide TVs w/ direcTV service.

I've grown a lot this year and I'm looking at how I'm going to wire my receivers. Is the setup sketched below possible?

I have a Slimline 5 LNB dish, i run D12 boxes now but will be running a couple of HD boxes this year as well.

With the SWM, can I just run one wire and then split off at each TV? This would save me a TON of wire over the old 1 wire to each tent from a central location way I have setup in the past.

Any advice would be helpful!

Thanks,
David

 

[tailgateco]

First of all...bump. Anyone got any tips on this?

Also, another question. Quad shield vs standard duo shield. Does it matter? Is quad shield really better?

 

[Jimbo]

to the site !

No need for Quad ...
As far as your set up,
You'll want a SWM SL 3/5 dish, which it looks like you have.
A Power Supply (21v I believe will work fine) .
You show a 16 channel swm, what is the model ?
How many TV's are you going to run ?
Are you running HD recvrs or HD DVR recvrs ?

If your doing only HD recvrs, you can probably get by with a swm 8 splitter and call it good.

Run the cable from the lnb to the IN on the power supply, the out to the splitter, make sure it goes to the Power spot on the splitter, then you can run a single line from the splitter to each recvr.

http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.as...-way-wide-band-(2--2150-mhz)-splitter-(sws-8)

 

[raoul5788]

Theoretically, quad shield is better, but not necessary in most cases. As to your setup, I'm not sure if it will work as you described. You would be better off using a splitter or two and connecting to it (them). To follow up on Jimbo's post, you need a 29 volt power inserter when using a swm8/16.

 

[jdspencer]

That arrangement should work. But, the signal to each receiver down the line will be reduced by each split.

 

[tailgateco]

Thanks for the welcome and the replies!

Right. I have a Slimline 5. I'm looking at this SWM 16 on [h=1]DirecTv SWM 16 Channel Single Wire Multi-Switch with Power Inserter 29V (PI29R1-03)[/h]
?I'll be running 16 TVs on this system. I have more, but they will run on another system with another dish and my trusty old zinwell 6x8.

I'm running mostly D12s. I have two H24s. So just 1 wire per receiver.

From what I understand, I'll have two ports on the SWM 16 that can both have 8 receivers. Cascading them like this saves me a TON of cable and setup time. When we say it will lose signal, what does that mean? Lower quality image? less channels? Could that be fixed by an inline amp? The total length of each 8 TV cascade will be ~100ft.

I found what appears to be a sweet deal on some COMMSCOPE duo sheild rg6 on ebay. Can anyone speak to the quality of it?

Also, i talked to some guy at a site that sells this stuff and he told me I should use all solid copper cable. Sounds expensive and he sells it so i took it with a grain of salt. Any thoughts?

Thanks again!

 

[Jimbo]

Thanks for the welcome and the replies!

Right. I have a Slimline 5. I'm looking at this SWM 16 on [h=1]DirecTv SWM 16 Channel Single Wire Multi-Switch with Power Inserter 29V (PI29R1-03)[/h]
?I'll be running 16 TVs on this system. I have more, but they will run on another system with another dish and my trusty old zinwell 6x8.

I'm running mostly D12s. I have two H24s. So just 1 wire per receiver.

From what I understand, I'll have two ports on the SWM 16 that can both have 8 receivers. Cascading them like this saves me a TON of cable and setup time. When we say it will lose signal, what does that mean? Lower quality image? less channels? Could that be fixed by an inline amp? The total length of each 8 TV cascade will be ~100ft.

I found what appears to be a sweet deal on some COMMSCOPE duo sheild rg6 on ebay. Can anyone speak to the quality of it?

Also, i talked to some guy at a site that sells this stuff and he told me I should use all solid copper cable. Sounds expensive and he sells it so i took it with a grain of salt. Any thoughts?

Thanks again!

Solid Copper is the way to go, IF you can afford it.
Running that many TVs looks like your going the right direction, I dont know if the smaller SWM switches are any better or not vs the one you showed, others may know if theres really a preferance.

 

[Joe Diamond]

Theoretically, quad shield is better, but not necessary in most cases. As to your setup, I'm not sure if it will work as you described. You would be better off using a splitter or two and connecting to it (them). To follow up on Jimbo's post, you need a 29 volt power inserter when using a swm8/16.

The only benefit I ever found to quad was that it provided a ground connection if you ran it through a ground block that was correctly installed. So running it from the dish to the GB without an external ground wire was ok. Neither DISH nor DirecTv seem to accept this. Quadshield is not mentioned in their installation material. AND it is expensive, requiring a special "quad" fitting. Always wondered where it comes from and why.

Joe

 

[raoul5788]

Thanks for the welcome and the replies!

Right. I have a Slimline 5. I'm looking at this SWM 16 on [h=1]DirecTv SWM 16 Channel Single Wire Multi-Switch with Power Inserter 29V (PI29R1-03)[/h]
?I'll be running 16 TVs on this system. I have more, but they will run on another system with another dish and my trusty old zinwell 6x8.

I'm running mostly D12s. I have two H24s. So just 1 wire per receiver.

From what I understand, I'll have two ports on the SWM 16 that can both have 8 receivers. Cascading them like this saves me a TON of cable and setup time. When we say it will lose signal, what does that mean? Lower quality image? less channels? Could that be fixed by an inline amp? The total length of each 8 TV cascade will be ~100ft.

I found what appears to be a sweet deal on some COMMSCOPE duo sheild rg6 on ebay. Can anyone speak to the quality of it?

Also, i talked to some guy at a site that sells this stuff and he told me I should use all solid copper cable. Sounds expensive and he sells it so i took it with a grain of salt. Any thoughts?

Thanks again!

My understanding is that solid core is only helpful/necessary on the cable carrying voltage for the power inserter.

 

[Jimbo]

My understanding is that solid core is only helpful/necessary on the cable carrying voltage for the power inserter.

But that would only come into effect with LONG runs, he's probably not making long runs ...

 

[jdspencer]

Note that each output of the SWM16 are limited to 8 tuners.
If you have DVRs in the mix, these use 2 tuners each.

 

[texasbrit]

You can cascade, but only a couple of times. Three two way splitters reduces the signal to one eighth of the original signal level. Anything more than that is very iffy, and that would only give you four receivers..
To avoid having 16 long cables, what you could do is take one of the SWM16 outputs, split it. Then run a cable from each side of the splitter to a four way splitter, each located somewhere convenient in the middle of four tuners. Then a cable from each of the outputs to each receiver. Probably much less cable.
Then do the same on the other side of the SWM16.
You don't need quad shield cable. You probably don't need solid copper either, if the furthest receiver really is only 100ft.

 

[tailgateco]

Thank you all for your input!

Good idea texasbrit on splitting it less. I'm figuring in a given run of the SWM 16 i'll hit 8 tents. Tents are 10 ft wide. Factor in a couple feet between each one and you got about 100 feet.

Thanks for the advice on R6 too. Now i just gotta get cracking making cables. I ordered the SWM 16 and some splitters. I'll play around with it and let y'all know what happens.

 

[tailgateco]

Just wanted to give a quick update. I did this and was able to get 8 D12s running with great signal/picture using this cascading method. I put in a split at each TV so one side of the splitter went to a TV the other went to the next splitter. I did this 6 times then of course the 7th splitter just went to the last two receivers. Very excited that this will work for me. Saves a ton of wire! Thanks for all your help input!