Quick answer: No.
Let’s say you have an HR54 Genie DVR and a few H24 receivers. You’ve decided that the full Genie 2 experience isn’t for you, and that’s ok. At Solid Signal we cater to people who want custom installations. You want to add a few more receivers to that lineup, but when you do, you get an error on the screen:
Problem Communicating with Dish (776)
You look at Solid Signal’s handy dandy error code checker and you see that you have too many tuners on the line. Remember that article about tuner math? An HR54 Genie DVR counts as 7 tuners (even though only 5 are used), a regular DVR counts as 2, and a regular receiver counts as 1. Imagine if what you have at home is a Genie, and 2 H24s. So you count up all your tuners and surprise surprise, you have 9 tuners.
The problem: The most common DIRECTV system installed until a few years ago only supports 8 tuners. So what do you do?
How can you fix this?
Take a look at the dish. If there is only one wire coming from it, that makes it a SWM-enabled dish. The problem is, you can’t just add another SWM Multiswitch on top of that dish. There’s a lot of technical reasoning why, but take it from us… you just can’t. It doesn’t work. It’s like putting a square peg in a round hole, you can’t do it.
What’s the right way to do it? Here’s the old-school way: replace the LNB (the front part of the dish) with a “legacy LNB” that has six wires coming out. Then run all four wires into a SWM-30 Multiswitch. We have a whole document on how to do it here.
The newer way involves simply swapping the older SWM LNB with one that’s more capable. If you’re on a tight budget, you can upgrade to 13 tuners using the Reverse Band 3 LNB. This LNB works with all of DIRECTV’s current satellite. It also supports 4K programming, and we all hope there will be more of that.
Changing out an LNB
Changing out an LNB is as simple as disconnecting the old one and connecting a new one. All it takes is a screwdriver, a 7/16″ wrench, and a steady hand. We give you full instructions in this guide.
The bottom line… if there’s only one wire coming out of the dish, you need to deal with that before you expand your system in any way. Upgrading to an external multiswitch is one way to do it that will give you maximum flexibility, but changing out the LNB can be easier and just as effective.
