Installing an Extra Satellite Feed at Home

I got real ambitious and energetic yesterday and decided to install a new satellite feed into a spare upstairs bedroom. I'd been putting this job off ever since we switched to satellite TV because it involved going up a ladder to the roof, then crawling on top of rafters through a 3' attic above the car garage for about 50', until reaching the bedroom and drilling a hole in the wall for the cable. It would be very hot and dusty work especially with all the pink insulation around. Fortunately for me, I found a simpler solution!

Our Shaw-Direct Satellite Dish with Quad-LNB


We have a Quad-LNB satellite dish and when it was installed, the guy from Starchoice connected 3 of the lines to our pre-existing cable lines - they went to our family room, Paulette's sewing room and a room next to our family room where we have a bunch of exercise equipment set-up. The 3 lines were a free installation, but if I wanted the extra line put in, that was going to cost $50. So, for some strange reason, I said no figuring that 3 locations for a TV were more than enough - wrong again!!

Exercise room with TV to watch while riding the stationary bike


Paulette uses the spare bedroom upstairs as another hobby room for doing scrapbooking, beadwork and other hobbies with the exception of quilting and sewing. It's also used by our kids and grandkids when they come to visit. The TV in the exercise room isn't much good for anything unless we are actually working out in there as there are no couches or chairs. So, that just leaves the TV in the family room and Paulette's sewing room.

This 5-1100 MHz splitter works fine with cable but NOT with satellite


So, off I went to our local Rona store(Rona is the wholly Canadian owned version of Home Depot), to buy a 75' length of RG6 cable to run from the satellite dish to the spare bedroom. After locating the cable in the store, and grimacing at the $35 price tag, I just happened to glance across the aisle and noticed a few 'splitter' devices for sale.

Regular cable splitter's, 2-way and 3-way etc., won't work on a satellite feed - I'd already tried with a few I had around the house. I had already looked for 'satellite-grade' splitters in both Home Depot and Canadian Tire but couldn't find any.

But, much to my surprise, Rona had a few different satellite rated splitters - the 2.4GHz kind that allows both the signal and DC voltage to be carried to the LNB. I bought one for $11. I was still a bit dubious about it working, but when I got home and hooked up the splitter, ahead of the 2 receivers, it worked just fine. So, now the TV in Paulette's sewing room and the bedroom next to it, both have perfect reception and can show any channel completely independent of the other.

So often my luck seems to go from simple to difficult, it's always nice to have a situation where the opposite occurs. In fact, it happens so infrequently, at least to me, it's definitely worth writing a blog entry about.

There was some other interesting technical news yesterday as well. Around noon our time, Blogger sites were attacked by the Russians! Some hacker in Georgia(not the U.S.) initiated a Denial of Service attack aimed at Blogger sites. Paulette and I both noticed that when we tried to access our own, or anybody else's blog, we got this message:

Google Error: "...your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application."

At first, I didn't know what was going on and thought maybe we had picked up a weird virus. After a few minutes checking online though, it was confirmed that this was indeed the same type of attack that had shutdown Twitter for 2 hours or so on Thursday. It lasted about an hour and then everything was back to normal again. Just a little excitement to spice up a Friday afternoon!

Just think, if the Russians had been successful in shutting down Blogger, you wouldn't be reading this entry and wondering why splitting a satellite signal is such a big deal anyway!!