Expert: Brian Mcintosh - 10/23/2006

Question
Hi, I have a question or two. Currently  I live in an apartment and am considering buying Dish Network. We currently have cable tv, cable modem and the phone line all through one provider. What we want to do is keep the cable modem and phone line with the one provider and then get dish. We have two rooms that we want to hook upcable AND i've been told that its possible for Dish to use the existing RG-6 cable to connect the two rooms. Howerver my question is can we have the cable interent and the dish run off the same Rg-6 cable by using a splitter or is that not possible at all and what might you recommend. Thanks !  

Answer
I do not believe that you can use the cable TV splitter for satellite and cable at the same time. Both systems use the same frequencies on the cable and would interfere.

I think the answer would be to run all your cables from the satellite to the room where all your cable TV cables terminate - this is likely to be the electrical room. You should see the cable splitter for all the rooms. I would put my cable modem in this room and connect it to a wireless access point and run Internet wireless to free up all of the other cables in the house. Make sure you enable some security on your wireless access point so no one can access it.

Then, I would take the output from the satellite splitter that would be installed again in the electrical room and connect the one or 2 rooms where you want satellite TV. Then you can connect the satellite receiver to the wall cable outlet in those rooms and that should work.

This assumes you have a decent RG6 cable in the apartment, and you can get your satellite cables and splitter in your room where all the cable TV cables are.

I hope this helps.

Cheers,
Brian