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Last Changed 3/5/2010
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We wanted a HDTV DVR. The final cutover to totally digital
broadcast TV has been delayed by Congress until 2008 or so, but the
trend is to digital programming and HDTV (High Definition TV) is the
best of digital format.
We choose DishTV for their HDTV programming and the cost of their
HDTV DVR. The DishTV HDTV DVR was the VIP622.
The DishTV VIP622 gave us some interesting problems when we went to
use it on the road.
The VIP622 wants two inputs from the satellite dish. When the
DishTV technician installed the VIP622, he used a splitter from one
of the tripod mounted DishPro
500 dish feeds and attached it to both VIP622 inputs. That
worked fine.
Then we went on the road and tried the VIP622 with our roof
mounted
Winegard AS-2003. The
AS-2003 has two coax feeds just like the tripod DishPro 500. One
of the coax feeds goes to the living room and the other to the
bedroom.
I used the splitter from the DishPro 500 with the AS-2003 but it
did not work. It seems that the Winegard AS-2003 expects a voltage
signal on the primary coax feed to control the satellite selection
and the splitter does not pass that signal.
While the VIP622 wants two inputs, it will operate with just one in
a severely limited mode. One of the functions lost with just a
signal feed is the ability to record a program while watching
another.
While the AS-2003 dish has two coax feeds, one is in the bedroom.
If we had known this, we would have had some extra coax cabling
installed to give us configuration flexibility.
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When we replaced the VIP622 with the VIP722K, we still had the issue with AS-2003. The signals from a true
Dish Pro sateliite dish can be used to drive the two inputs to a DVR but the coax feeds from the Winegard AS-2003 can't.
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We eventually solved the coax feed issue by installing a conduit
from the bedroom to the living room under the trailer belly. We can
now route the bedroom signal to the VIP622 in the living room so the
VIP622 has two feeds.
We used the same conduit to run the Cat-5 wiring for our WISP radio. |
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The VIP622 can drive a second TV, each watching its own programs.
We took the second TV output of the VIP622 and ran that to a coax
switch. The other leg of the switch came from the antenna/cable
connection for the bedroom TV. Now the coax that used to carry
antenna/cable to the bedroom can also carry the second TV output of
the VIP622 depending on the switch position.
There is a provision to run the antenna/cable signal through the
VIP622 but we choose not to do that for simplicity reasons. |
Click on images to enlarge |
While the VIP622 can drive different programming to two TVs, it can
be limited by the
Winegard AS-2003. Both
programs have to be off of the same satellite.
To allow the VIP622 to switch the satellite for recording purposes,
we gave input channel 2 of the VIP622 to the primary coax feed of
the Winegard AS-2003 since the VIP622 uses channel 2 as the main
recording channel. Input channel 2 is also the channel used to
drive the second TV. This caused a couple of issues.
When we are using the Winegard AS-2003, we have to use the second TV
remote to cause satellite changes. This means moving remote 2
between the living room and the bedroom. A second remote would
solve this but the remote 2 is a RF (radio frequency) unit, not the
typical IR (Infrared) type.
The second problem is that the bedroom TV is subject to what is
being recorded by the DVR. If the bedroom TV viewer wants to watch
something else, the recording needs to be stopped. This could be
solved by splitting the secondary Winegard AS-2003 feed and adding
an additional satellite receiver. But this would cost $5.00 a month
and the conflict happens rarely as we take advantage of receiving
broadcast TV from the East coast (Atlanta) and the West coast (San
Francisco) to record when we are not watching and to record programs
that occur in the same time slot.
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We carry a DishPro 1000
dish mounted on a tripod. This replaced the original DishPro 500.
When the VIP622 is connected to the DishPro 1000 dish, we have full
flexibility of programming. We use the roof mounted AS-2003 for
quick overnight stops where we don’t want to spend the time to setup
the tripod. The tripod setup also gives us flexibility when we are
parked in trees. There is a chance that the tripod can be located
clear of the trees. |
Click on images to enlarge |
To ease cabling, we installed two coax switches between the
exterior feeds from the tripod DishPro 1000 and the roof mounted
AS-2003 dish. |
