You can use both tuners on a hdr on a single cable surprisingly effectively buy using lnb1 out to lnb2 in with a short loop cable, even to the extent of recording two channels and watching some third channels.
http://myhumax.org/forum/topic/what-can-i-record-and-watch-using-1-or-2-cables
In any case Barry's the man, sounds as if the HD may get a mod to the way DD is handled.
Graham,
A single cable would be good news. Down where I live in France and with a house built on the edge of a 500 foot high cliff, it is always the first thing a thunderstorm hits when it sweeps up from down in the valley below. I now have a big anti surge box down in the cellar to protect against surges on the main inwards power line and glass fuses on the phone line. After my experience in 2008, where the satellite cable lightning protection on the power block failed, I now have an expensive fast switching gas valve diverter-to-earth in line where the satellite cable enters the house. These are about €150 each, so that is quite a saving, if I can avoid having to buy another one for a second cable. Having become used to the convenience of a Sky+HD box for recording programs when I am in the UK, I am tempted with a Humax HDR box.
Wilson
The hdrs tuner's have the capability to demux two channels at the same time from the same transponder, when combined with the ability to pass all channels sharing the same frequency band and polarisation as tuner 1 is using across the loop to tuner 2 the dual capability is quite surprising. Add to this that most TV channels are in the two low frequency quadrants and that regionalised channels like bbc1 have both horizontal and vertical variants it's quite often possible to make a 3rd channel viewable and in some cases time shifteable as well.
For example recording both BBC-HD and BBC1-HD at the same time you can view (and time-shift) the following. (ITV1 will depend on your postcode putting the channel at 103 though 977 is always available). Sorry about the repeats it's part of a list that lets the user customise according to postcode used.
121 Channel 4 + 1
122 E4
123 E4 +1
124 More4
975 Channel 4 + 1
103 ITV 1 London
103 ITV 1 Granada
103 ITV 1 Anglia North
103 ITV 1 Central West
113 ITV2
117 ITV4
602 CITV
977 ITV 1 London (audio described)
101 BBC One
952 BBC 1 E Mids
953 BBC 1 East (E)
964 BBC 1 Wales
963 BBC 1 W Mids
966 BBC 1 Yorks
967 BBC 1 Eyrks*L
971 BBC 2 W
101 BBC One
956 BBC 1 NE & C
957 BBC 1 NI
958 BBC 1 Oxford
961 BBC 1 South
962 BBC 1 S West
969 BBC 2 NI
108 BBC1 HD
109 BBC HD
103 STV
103 UTV
112 ITV1 + 1
115 ITV3
116 ITV3 +1
731 Talk Sport Radio
119 ITV 1 HD (Granada)
304 Movies4Men
306 Movies4Men2
724 Absolute Radio
725 Absolute Classic Rock
726 Absolute 80's
727 NME Radio
728 WRN
729 JazzFM
777 Insight Radio
790 TWR Radio
307 Movies4men2+1
403 Showcase
504 B4U Music
651 Renault TV
692 Revelation
815 Jewelry Ch
134 CBS Drama
204 Euronews
652 Psychic TV
870 Babestation
208 Bloomberg TV
801 price-drop tv
814 Speed Auction TV
693 Islam Channel
142 TRUE ENT
302 True Movies
303 True Movies 2
500 Chart Show TV
501 The Vault
502 Flava
503 Scuzz
516 NME TV
517 Bliss
603 POP
604 POPGirl
605 Tiny POP
606 Kix!
203 Al Jazeera English
209 NHK WORLD TV
Been thinking about the lightning issue. Might be a bit late now (and it's quite expensive) how about using a fibre optic lnb and fibre signal connections, will also solve your multituner problems.
http://www.sateuropa.co.uk/overview.asp?catid=12&subcat=66
The only metallic connections dish to property will be the low voltage power supply connections which should be much easier to protect.
Graham,
The problem is that there is no power at the bottom of the garden, so I would have to lay power down for the 12V supply. By the time I had done this and bought both ends of the equipment, I am considerably more than laying new 7.5mm shotgun cable (labour cost is mainly beer) and an additional gas valve. Strangely the price has come down and they are now only 90€.
Oddly I am having the same issue on the DAC from my Panasonic BD30 Blu Ray player. I tried today to connect this via a TOSlink cable to the Spitfire DAC. I went into the BD30 menu and set digital output to downgrade to PCM. Usual horrible noise. It makes no difference if you set downgrade to PCM on or off. I am now waiting for an answer from Panasonic.
I am thinking of getting an Aqua Acoustic La Voce DAC when they bring out their new model using 2 Wolfson WM-8740 DAC chips in dual differential mode in a few weeks. It is a beautifully made DAC with dual toroidal PSU's for the digital and analogue sides.
Here is the lightning protector is use and will need another one of.
Wilson
Picture missed off
Wilson
Sat_Lightning_Protector.jpg (66.7 KB, 1 downloads) 13 years old The power connections are built into the fibre cable you don't need power at the lnb just like a conventional universal lnb.
Graham,
Thanks for that. On my estimation the total cost of the LNB, the optical to copper box and 50M of cable come to £370. I can buy 50M of WF100 twin 7mm shotgun cable for around £55. I really need to replace the plastic conduit anyway as the wild boars have dug it up a few times and it is quite 'repaired'. Conduit is dead cheap at around £8 for 50M. I doubt if I would be able to pull the WF100 cable through the old conduit. It is always easier to thread the cable through before you bury it. Then I need another lightning protector at €90. Ignoring the labour element, you can see that there is quite a difference in cost.
Dishes being struck by lightning are very rare. The loss adjuster who visited said it was the first one he has ever seen. I have hammered a large steel spike into the ground at the dish and earthed the dish, hoping that most of the current will go this way rather than down the aerial wire (see photos of LNB and aerial wire). The fixings to the rock face are plastic Rawlplugs with 6" coach screws. When it got hit, two of these 6" screws were fired 25 feet across the garden. If my dish was struck again, I assume that it would kill the optical LNB, if I had fitted one at another £159 against £27 for a twin Invacom LNB. The gas earth diverter valves are rated for 5 events, before they need replacing.
I think you can see where I am coming from. Your suggestion is a very clever one but I think the economics argue in favour of a traditional copper wired LNB.
On a totally different subject, has anyone on the Forum modified an HD or HDR box to have a Coax S/PDIF output in place of the optical. In theory, this is always better as optical is limited to 44.1 KHz. Also you are taking two links out of the audio chain, the digital to optical converter and the optical to digital converter, which again must degrade the signal, add noise, etc.
Wilson
R1000891.jpg (68.9 KB, 0 downloads) 13 years old R1000880.jpg (78.2 KB, 0 downloads) 13 years old Wow, yes I did initially say probably a bit late now. Were you starting from scratch the economics make a lot more sense 
I offer the following thought that you might like to consider.
For 40yrs I was a planning engineer with National Grid. Next time you are near enough have a close look at a 275kV or 400kV overhead line. These carry two circuits with the phase conductors vertically spaced either side of the tower. At the peak of the tower is a smaller aerial earth conductor which is bonded to each tower. The primary purpose of this is to create a cone of protection from direct lightning strikes on the main phase conductors. These days though the earth conductor encloses a fibre bundle to create a high speed data connection.
It might be possible to protect the dish in a similar way with a seperately bonded conductor over the dish.
A lightning conductor mounted higher up the rock face might be worth considering. The sharp points on these in the prescence of a strong potential difference create a conducting ionised air path and can in fact discharge charged clouds as well as providing a more attractive target.
My hdr in fact has a optical to coax s/pdif converter due to the distance of my AV amp from the hdr (about 10M) at this distance attenuation of the optical signals can be a problem due to the low power led light source used. As you would expect being digital it has no effect on sound quality. There's loads of these on flea-bay
Example
Graham,
I use one of those boxes in the UK, with the same problem as you. The optical signal from my Apple Airport Express was too weak to wake up the Beresford DAC, which is about 6 meters away and I had to put in one of the opt-coax boxes.
I really have an itchy soldering iron hand and thought of delving into the Humax to see if I could strip out the audio signal before it hit the optical output generator. I suspect the voltage is a bit on the low side (coax needs 0.5 to 1.0 V peak to peak to work well at a DAC). I might need to put in a little NME 49720 op-amp to boost the signal (handles up to 55 Mhz so the 96 KHz would not be an issue). I would then probably put a BNC connector on the outside.
Wilson
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