# 811 and 522?



## chuckflarhu (Oct 27, 2005)

I recently purchased a Toshiba HDTV. I am currently running it with a Dish DVR 522. The 522 is in single mode on the one tv. 

I would really like to get some HD content, but my wife really wants to keep the dual tuner DVR. There is no way I can purchase the 942 as it costs more than the tv.

Is it possible to have the 522 and an 811 connected to the same television? The inputs on the TV are not a problem as there are an HDMI, 2 component, s-video, composite, and coax connection.

I was just wondering on the reciever side of things.


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## lifterguy (Dec 22, 2003)

Yes. What your are describing is the exact same set-up I have now. Of course you will need another feed from your dish for the 811. This may require a different switch (depending on your current setup.) My system was installed earlier this year - It's a Dish Pro Plus setup, with 2 lines coming down from the dish. Inside the house, a diplexer splits one line into 2 feeds for the 522, and the other line goes into the 811. The remote for the 811 is an RF remote, and will need to be set to a different remote code than the remote code on the 2nd tv remote for the 522 (if you use that remote.)
One word of warning - since you are already used to the DVR features of the 522, you will greatly miss them everytime you switch over to the 811 (I know I do.) You will also face the frustation of wanting to watch as much as possible in HD, but finding that you miss some HD programs you want to see because you aren't there to watch them "live", and there is no way to time shift them without recording the show in an inferior SD format.


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## chuckflarhu (Oct 27, 2005)

Yeah, I thought that was how it would be. Plus, would dish be willing to come out and install it that way? I don't think I have the ability to put in a switch and run lines. 

Maybe I should switch providers once my obligation is met to one where I can get an HD DVR for free.


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## Grampa67 (Mar 14, 2005)

chuckflarhu said:


> Yeah, I thought that was how it would be. Plus, would dish be willing to come out and install it that way? I don't think I have the ability to put in a switch and run lines.
> 
> Maybe I should switch providers once my obligation is met to one where I can get an HD DVR for free.


I have a 522 and a 811 also an am really sorry that I didn't get a 922. Their are a lot of old movies on HDNET that I have missed.


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## Gilly (Apr 5, 2005)

chuckflarhu said:


> Is it possible to have the 522 and an 811 connected to the same television?


Absolutely, that's the way I have it. However, my TV has a DVI input, so I hook up the 811 that way and the 522 using just coax. I first hooked up the 522 using the S-video and then tried the RCA input, but the pq was very bad. The pq from 522 to a large screen (60" in my case) is bad anyway, but for some reason, it was slightly better using coax. You think it would be the opposite, but it wasn't. I really don't like watching the 522 on my 60" Sony, because it's so bad.



chuckflarhu said:


> Maybe I should switch providers once my obligation is met to one where I can get an HD DVR for free.


You can't get a free HD DVR from D* or E*, unless you are talking about cable.


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## Jason Nipp (Jun 10, 2004)

I feed my 522 into the 811, and yes it does upconvert it to match the output setting. 

On the other hand I never said that doing this improves PQ of the 522.


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## Gilly (Apr 5, 2005)

Jason,
How large is the TV that you view the 522 on? The pq is so bad on my 60" Sony LCD that it reminds me of Internet video. The screen doesn't refresh very fast...there are like trails behind moving images. On my analog 26", it's fine. But would love to watch recorded programs on my large TV but the pq is so bad that I don't. 

Does viewing shows from your 522 to your big screen have trails like I described above? On mine, the colors are different than the 811 as well. I just wander if going through the 811 would make a difference. I didn't know you could do that. I'll give that a try.

With that said, I realize that the pq won't be as good as the 811 because of using DVI.
Thanx.
Gilly


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## Jason Nipp (Jun 10, 2004)

Trails are a issue typically associated with DLP TV's for the most part. 

I distribute my 522 to several rooms. I have it running via direct S-Video connection to a 32" panny Tube, 20" Samsung Tube, 27" Sharp Tube, 20" Westinghouse LCD, and thru my 811 to a Hitachi 50" RP LCD. On the HDTV's the picture is certainly not as clear as on the others....But I do not have any trailing or otherwise. Oh, and all these TV's are SDTV except the Hitachi, which is run thru an 811 that I run at 1080i for all content.

Let me do this, I will take a picture of each TV in the house running off the 522 tonight, if you can tell quality differences by looking at the pictures I'll post them, but it is possible that the camera will not do any justice, if there is no decernable differences I will not waste the bandwidth.


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## Jason Nipp (Jun 10, 2004)

Gilly...Question.

Are you using an OTA feed on your 811? If not run your TV2 into the OTA port on the 811 and map the TV2 output channel in the 811 to receive the signal. At this point the 522 will now be upconverted using the 811.

Also, you could connect the 522 to the 811 thru vid 1 or 2 back panel jacks. These inputs are also upconverted by the 811.

But what I would recommend is to take a smaller TV to the location where the 60" is, and see if that feed has noise or anything else going on. Since I distribute the TV2 out of the 522 to several locations, I did have to amplify it. Yes TV2 of the 522 is already amplified, but I have found that it's not as great of an amplifier as one would hope for. Just my opinion.

Jason


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## Jason Nipp (Jun 10, 2004)

To start off, here is nickjr the HD set. This is running off an 811, but the content your see in these pics is TV2 of the 522 that I inject into the 811. It sounds more complicated than it is.

Point to the pic for a minute to see filename, which indentifies which Display your looking at.


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## Jason Nipp (Jun 10, 2004)

Here are the others. I took pics with and without flash so you could tell that they are truly different TV's. he first pic is the 50" Hitachi just for benchmarking. The other pictures are all my SDTV sets. The Panny is the only one directly connected to the 522. 

Sorry about the scan lines, can't help that on a CRT. I guarantee the pic is crystal clear for the most part beyond the camera.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Gilly..

Hmmm 60" Sony.. is it a GWII LCD or a RPTV? I have a GWII myself and I have an 811 hooked via DVI. The DVI SD is acceptable but next to the HD and OTA it makes SD look bad. It should do a decent job on scaling your svideo, but I would not expect miracles. The SD was designed to run on a smaller configuration for sure. Couple of questions.

1) How far are you sitting from the set?
2) What setting do you have it set at? Is it set to vivid? Try mild and pro that should help the artifacts. 
3) Is your sharpness cranked up? if it is.. turn it down.
4) You Sony should do a better job upscaling the SD than your 811. I would hook up your 522 directly to your Sony on your svideo and compare the picture with your 811 SD.
5) Power conditionar might improve PQ.. Did with me but I am not sure why. 

Couple of tips to help improve PQ of SD on big screens but you still are working with a medium not designed for 60" TVs. However Cartoons still look great.. Why? because they compress wonderfully.


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## Gilly (Apr 5, 2005)

Jason Nipp said:


> Are you using an OTA feed on your 811?


Yes, I'm getting 5 local OTA digital channels.



Jason Nipp said:


> Also, you could connect the 522 to the 811 thru vid 1 or 2 back panel jacks. These inputs are also upconverted by the 811.


I haven't had a chance to do this since you posted this last week, but will try to get this done today.



Ron Barry said:


> Gilly..Hmmm 60" Sony.. is it a GWII LCD or a RPTV?


Not sure what you meen by GWII or RPTV, but the model # is KF60XBR800.



Ron Barry said:


> 1) How far are you sitting from the set?
> 2) What setting do you have it set at? Is it set to vivid? Try mild and pro that should help the artifacts.
> 3) Is your sharpness cranked up? if it is.. turn it down.
> 4) You Sony should do a better job upscaling the SD than your 811. I would hook up your 522 directly to your Sony on your svideo and compare the picture with your 811 SD.


1) 13.5 feet
2) I have the setting on the TV set to Standard, I tried Mild but didn't help much.
3) Sharpness is right in the middle. I can try playing around with that to see if it helps.
4) When I first got the 522, I hooked it up using s-video, then tried the rca video hookup, but oddly, the coax was slightly better pq, which should be opposite.

Thanks Jason and Ron for your replies, insights and tips. I will try to hook the 522 up through the 811 and see if that helps.

Gilly


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## Jason Nipp (Jun 10, 2004)

Gilly said:


> Yes, I'm getting 5 local OTA digital channels.
> 
> I haven't had a chance to do this since you posted this last week, but will try to get this done today.
> 
> ...


RP/RPTV is Rear projection.

Your SD picture will perform better on a big screen/dish receiver if you turn the sharpness down. I have mine almost at the minimum setting on all my displays, HD or not.


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## Gilly (Apr 5, 2005)

Jason/Ron - Thank you so much!!! Hooking the 522 through my 811 via RCA makes the pq MUCH BETTER! Obviously not HD, but now it's as clear as the SD channels directly from the 811. This is awesome.



Ron Barry said:


> Gilly..Hmmm 60" Sony.. is it a GWII LCD or a RPTV?





Jason Nipp said:


> RP/RPTV is Rear projection.


My Sony is a rear proj LCD TV.

Thanks again.
Gilly


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

I believe we have the same TV Gilly.. GWII is short for Grand Wega II. There is also a Grand Wega III and might even have a 4 by now. Mind is also a 60" Rear Projection LCD. Glad to hear that PQ improved. Due keep it off vivid. Vivid will really bring out the artifacts. I also would suggest getting a Home Theater calibration DVD and use that to set your component inputs. Makes for a nice starting point and can further improvie your 811 PQ.


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## Gilly (Apr 5, 2005)

Ron Barry said:


> I also would suggest getting a Home Theater calibration DVD and use that to set your component inputs. Makes for a nice starting point and can further improvie your 811 PQ.


I use the DVI input for my 811 and only use the component inputs for my DVD player/recorder. Is there a way to calibrate the DVI input?

Yes, mine is the Grand Wega II. I should have figured "GWII" to mean that. It's a little over 2 years old.


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## Jason Nipp (Jun 10, 2004)

Yes, it has picture control settings just as any other input.

I actually paid to have mine done since my Display's DVI is shared by two sources. ISF can get pricey though as they charge per input.


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## dcb (Jun 4, 2002)

chuckflarhu said:


> I recently purchased a Toshiba HDTV. I am currently running it with a Dish DVR 522. The 522 is in single mode on the one tv. .


I have been reading with intrerest this thread (811 and 522). I have a 32" Westinghouse HD LCD connected to a 508 receiver and a Dish Pro500 dish.

I just bought a used 811 primarily to get OTA HD (It's still in the box). I will also subscribe to Dish's HD package at some point. I would like to keep the 508 for it's DVR capabilities. What are some of the issues and possibilties in hooking up this combination? I'm somewhat of a novice at this stuff.

Don


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## BobaBird (Mar 31, 2002)

dcb, you will have to run an additional line from the dish to connect the 811. You can't use a splitter, and the DishPro Plus single line installation is only for dual tuner receivers - not two separate ones. IIRC, the 811 requires reception of a satellite signal for the OTA tuner to work.

Make sure the receivers are set to respond to different remote addresses so the IR side of the 508's remote doesn't control the 811. (Same idea applies to the UHF Pro signal from the 522 TV2 and 811's remotes controlling each other.) Instructions are in the manual.


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## dcb (Jun 4, 2002)

BobaBird said:


> dcb, you will have to run an additional line from the dish to connect the 811. You can't use a splitter, and the DishPro Plus single line installation is only for dual tuner receivers - not two separate ones. IIRC, the 811 requires reception of a satellite signal for the OTA tuner to work.
> 
> Make sure the receivers are set to respond to different remote addresses so the IR side of the 508's remote doesn't control the 811. (Same idea applies to the UHF Pro signal from the 522 TV2 and 811's remotes controlling each other.) Instructions are in the manual.


Ok, I will need the line run from my Dish to the revceiver, but do I have to have the 811 activated by Dish in irder to get OTA HD channnels?


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## BobaBird (Mar 31, 2002)

Not sure, but I wouldn't think so since an unsubscribed 811 can receive OTA as long as it also still gets a satellite signal.


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