[brianhem10]

Hi,

First off, I need to vent by saying DirecTV has gotten me crazy over the last 24 hours. I am a college student living in an apartment with a roommate, and the directv situation is killing me.

Our landlord guarantees us one directv outlet in the living room. However, I would like to watch TV in my room while my roommate has his TV in his 'living area' (he is technically living in the living room, since I am paying extra rent to live in the bedroom, its a 1-bd apt.).

He is going to be using a standard D11 receiver, and I am bringing my Hughes receiver w/ a tivo box that I just deactivated from my home account. After spending an HOUR on the phone with DirecTV, we came to the conclusion I should get a multiswitch. I learned all about how DSS works, and so I bought a $20 3/4 multiswitch.

I went to sleep last night thinking everything was solved, but when I woke up, I did some more research and realized I was screwed - technically, our apartment is just an 'output' line on the switch, so I dont have access to the dual LNB lines.

Unfortunately, our landlord restricts us to having any repairs done by their own service, so a new line being installed can take up to a month and costs more than the $50 from DTV. Is there anything I am missing on how I can get TV in more room? Is the switch we bought useless?

Another tech today said I can go out and buy a regular coax splitter, and it will work except that we have to watch the same channel on TV (which is fine). But, every site I see that talks about splitters says it won't work, so I dont really trust the tech I spoke too.

Can anyone please help!!! This is causing a huge rift between my roommate and I because I am spending a lot on a good TV and shipping my logitech Z-680's (one reason I want the Hughes receiver is it has a fiber-optic audio output, while the D11 doesnt), etc etc...and he has a ****** 15" lcd.

Thanks,
Brian

 

[stevel]

You pretty much have the situation described correctly. You cannot use a multiswitch. A splitter might work if, as you say, you watch the same channel. You may want to consider a wireless TV signal sender ("Rabbit" or similar) rather than trying to run the DirecTV signal to another receiver.

 

[JimSpence]

If you have access to the dish or multiswitch, then you could use a stacker to combine two lines to your apartment. Then using a combination of ahigh frequency splitter, a destacker and multisiwtch to create more lines. The downside is that you'll be restricted to the 101 satellite.