Planning more than doing

October 24, 2007
Peoria, AZ


The last couple of days have involved more "puttering", which is another way of saying "a series of not too well focused activities generating little completed work". I feel like I've been jumping from thing to thing, not necessarily "doing" anything. I decided to focus on a couple of projects, and that's helped but I'm still in the planning stages so don't have a lot to show for it yet.

One of the things I want to do is convert the house to the same communications processes we use in the coach. Currently, we have DirecTV and Hughes Internet in the coach, and Cox Cable in the house. It's a pain to try to manage both services on and off when we're home, especially like now when we're heading out in a few weeks. We end up paying for both, which isn't acceptable in the long term.


Last spring, I bought a DirecTV Hi-Def DVR (Digital Video Recorder). It's like TiVo, but for DirecTV. Since we have HD-friendly TVs in the house, I should be able to add the HD DVR to our existing account and drop the cable TV. We can also get over-the-air HD; I picked up a cheap Radio Shack antenna and the network stations come in great. When I bought the DVR, I picked up a new 5-LNB dish for outside at the same time. I got everything on eBay for a pretty good price. You'd think we're all set, right? Au contraire...


The new dish is larger and heavier, so it needs a better support. The new dish doesn't fit the rules of our HOA, so it'll have to be mounted lower, below the 6' wall level in the back yard. HD requires new RG-6 cable to be run from the dish to the DVR inside, and multiple cables at that (the DVR is cool and will allow recording two channels at the same time -- if you have two cables from the dish), and I've realized that the old dish that came with the house wasn't grounded correctly. Lastly, I've researched the setup process, and realized I need to upgrade my signal strength meter to get it aimed right. So....


I've found pretty much everyting I need so far online. Fortunately, I'd bought a good crimping tool several years ago, so I can make up the custom cables -- once I resupply on the cable itself (I only have 30-35 feet left. I may be able to source that locally. On the other hand, I need to work through the planning side a bit more, since it's not just getting the TV in the living room to work. I need to decide if over-the-air channels are enough for the bedroom and kitchen (generally, it's only local news and maybe a bit of Jay Leno we watch there) or if I need additional DirecTV receivers. I have one from the old coach, but it's not HD-capable. And running the antenna for multiple TVs isn't a picnic, either. Still more ruminating to do here.

The Internet side is a little more straightforward since everything's wireless these days. We can add a fixed Hughes dish and shuttle the satellite modem back and forth between the coach and house, or we can try to survive on the Verizon wireless broadband service I added as a backup to the dish in the coach. I picked it up in Oregon when we were satellite-challenged for a while (parked under trees or coach in the service center), and I've ordered a router for the card that'll allow us to use it anywhere in the house. We'll see how that works out...