[mythtv-users] OT: DirecTV STB, Lease vs Own?

Marco Nelissen marcone at xs4all.nl
Sat Apr 8 16:52:53 UTC 2006


>Satellite is limited by the number of "LNB"'s on a dish. The most you
>can get in one satellite reciever (The bit that points at the dish) is
>a "Quad LNB" (4 channels), but with some juducious juggling and a
>special adapter you can fit 2 recievers onto 1 dish (It means a slight
>hit in signal quality for both recievers, but the capability of up to
>8 channels).

That's not *quite* how it works. The tivo faq has a lengthy explanation
(http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=55509) but in a
nutshell: an single-LNB can look at either the odd or the even transponders
on the satellite at any given time. A dual-LNB can look at all of them
at the same time. There should be no need for a "quad LNB", since a dual
LNB can already look at all transponders.
The LNB-terminology seems a bit confusing, since "triple LNB" is commonly
used to refer to a dish that has three LNBs mounted to it, allowing it to
look at three different satellites at the same time(*). So if you order a
package that requires some feeds from other satellites, and combine that
with multi-room service, you'll actually get a dish with 3 dual-LNBs.

(*) since DirecTV has launched new satellites to carry local HD in mpeg-4,
then even have 5-LNB dishes. I guess "penta-LNB" didn't sound so good ;)



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