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Written by Administrator   
Thursday, 15 September 2005 21:09
As I recently blogged, I've set up a Bell ExpressVu receiver to receive NASA TV. Soon after installing the system, I ran in to a TV 'scheduling' issue with the rest of the family (who aren't nearly as interested in watching images of astronauts brushing their teeth in zero-g). Instead of moving the entire setup to a second television set, I decided to move the receiver to my server room, and build a distribution system to distribute the channel to all of the televisions in the house.

I don't use any antenna inputs on any of my televisions, because all of the devices I use (satellite receivers, XBOX consoles, etc) have composite, component, or S-video outputs. This means that every set has an unused antenna input that would be an ideal input to view the NASA TV. Unfortunately, I would have to run a second coax cable to each set just for this. Instead of that, I discovered a way to 'multiplex' the Bell ExpressVu LNB signal and the channel 3 signal from the NASA TV receiver.

The trick is to use some satellite/UHF/VHF combiners (a fuzzy picture here). I put one of these in the server room on the output of the NASA TV receiver to multiplex the channel 3 signal on the LNB feed back upstairs to the TV. On the TV end, I put another one of these to de-multiplex the LNB signal and the channel 3 signal, which goes straight to the antenna input of the TV. This worked beautifully, so I then split the channel 3 signal into 3, ran this in to 3 separate combiners, and multiplexed the signal on 3 separate LNB feeds to separate TVs around the house.

This now gives me the ability to watch NASA TV at three separate locations in the house.

Last Updated on Thursday, 15 September 2005 21:09