I'm soon moving into my first home and I'm not quite sure the best way to get signal to multiple rooms. I definitely will need HD signal in 2 rooms and probably a 3rd. I would then want at least an SD signal in at least 3 other rooms.

With TWC I would approach this by getting 2 receivers for the big TV's and splitting the incoming signal off to the SD TV's. The problem is that I would like to consider Uverse and satellite. For both of these services I have to through a receiver of some sort correct? I obviously don't want to pay for 5+ receivers each month...

The only solution I can think of would be to split the signal after the receivers (1 upstairs and 1 downstairs) and then use RF remotes to control the receiver. This still wouldn't be ideal as every room down stairs would need to be on the same channel.

How would everyone else approach this problem? Anyone have satellite or uverse with a large number of TV's?

10/2/2011 10:25:41 PM

i grew up in a house with 9 TVs & we had dish network. some of the TVs were split off of other rooms' receivers. it worked pretty well. there were 4 people in the house & 3 or 4 receivers.

10/2/2011 11:34:42 PM

why in god's name would someone need 9 tv's??

10/3/2011 8:07:21 AM

they have children

10/3/2011 8:52:21 AM

Quote :

"pay for 5+ receivers each month"

10/3/2011 9:50:27 AM

se7entythree, how did your family approach changing the channel in the rooms without the receivers?

Synapse, paying for a separate receiver for every TV would not be an acceptable solution for me. Something I did think about though was putting Roku boxes in each periphery room such as guest rooms and the garage. This would bring me down to the 3-4 receiver range.

10/3/2011 10:42:07 AM

Quote :

"why in god's name would someone need 9 tv's??"

because we had lots of rooms. one in each of the following: living room (nobody really ever sat there), playroom (where brother & i spend most of our time), kitchen, screened porch, cave (the room over the garage where my parents watched tv most of the time, a giant 60something" one), my bedroom, brother's bedroom, parents' bedroom, & parents' bathroom.

short answer: bc we can

Quote :

"how did your family approach changing the channel in the rooms without the receivers?"

we had uhf remotes from dish. they worked through the walls, just make sure you point it in the general direction of the receiver. with dish's dual receivers, you run coax from the receiver to the 2nd (or 3rd or 4th) tv. at that tv, you can put a splitter in-line & attach the antenna that's supposed to be connected to the back of the receiver. dish didn't have dual receivers when we lived in that house, but they do now, & that's how my bedroom tv is hooked up.

10/3/2011 11:52:29 AM

you could get the max num of boxes you want to pay for and then get slingbox/slingcatcher pairs for each additional room. sd slingboxes are like $50 now

10/3/2011 11:57:25 AM

speaking on sling, dish has an adapter for free after rebate right now. $99 up front though. i've been considering it...

also if you decided to switch to dish, they have a referral program. i can send you an invite thingy. you get $50 off your first bill. just fyi

10/3/2011 12:00:24 PM

Quote :

"Synapse, paying for a separate receiver for every TV would not be an acceptable solution for me."

How much are Roku boxes? Also wouldn't you only be able to streak one thing at a time, per account (assuming netflix is the primary provider). Plus you'd probably have to go in and log the boxes into netflix whenever guests etc want to use them.

How about just getting HD Antennas for the lesser used TVs? That way you'd at least be able to watch live TV.

10/3/2011 12:52:55 PM

I wasn't aware of the dual receivers that Dish offers. Two dedicated HD sources and then two SD sources split between upstairs and downstairs. That could be exactly what I am looking for. If I go with Dish I will use you as a referral.

If I could dedicate one receiver to being the SlingBox receiver, and then have multiple SlingCatchers able to function off the one SlingBox...all over LAN...that would also be a good solution. After looking around though it appears Sling doesn't quite work the way I would want it to.

^ at $60/box, I would break even after 9 months. If I use a receiver for every TV going forward that could get pricey quick.

I currently use a single box to watch hulu and netflix, so I'm not sure how having multiple boxes affects your accounts. Are you saying I would have to login to those services each time due to other boxes logging me out? Everything has worked hands free to this point using only using 1 box and the web interfaces for these services.

Putting up an antenna would be a good idea...


[Edited on October 3, 2011 at 1:12 PM. Reason : New reponse]

10/3/2011 12:54:22 PM

PM me your name & email address if you decide to go with them so i can send you the referral. i just have to enter that in the form on my account online so dish sends them. and thanks!!! oh and dish has the blockbuster movie pass thing now that includes streaming + dvd/bluray/video games by mail.

here's the link for the sling adapter rebate
http://www.dishnetwork.com/redirects/promotion/freeTVeverywhere/default.aspx

i can take/post a pic of the antenna setup if you need it.

10/3/2011 1:05:23 PM

For what it's worth we just used a dual tuner receiver for dish network, some signal distributors, and a western digital live tv box on the ancillary TV's through the house.

So basically we had a HD live signal, a SD live signal, and Netflix/Network video access on all the TV's. Dish network tuner came with 2 RF remotes. We just ripped all our DVD's and stuff to the NAS and that seemed to be enough. But we only had like 4 or 5 TV's.

10/3/2011 7:12:09 PM

For Dish Network, the dual receivers are great, but be aware they charge a ridiculous amount for the second receiver to be a dual tuner. I had one in the bedroom (because at the time the lease fee was about the same as a single), but before I cancelled last month, it was $14/month just for that box. If youre doing 3 rooms, it would be cheaper for you to do 3 boxes with DirecTV ($6/month for each additional receiver).

10/3/2011 10:22:34 PM

you could always just run basic cable to all the lesser tv's which still carries all the hd locals for like $14/month

10/3/2011 10:54:26 PM

^Actually, you can do that for free if you have TWC for internet...

10/4/2011 1:32:19 AM