Directv antenna coax switch

[kd5dga]

Recently I had upgraded my Directv and the installer had left me a 8 port antenna switch that was mounted to the outside wall. This is used to combine two satellite dishes to run multiple cables to every reciever in the house.
Does these switches have and usefullness for scanning hobby?

 

[n5ims]

Sorry, but they're really not of much use for scanning. They work by the receiver sending a voltage on the coax to indicate which LNB port is desired and the switch connects that line to it. Even if you could rig up something to put the right voltages on the coax to make the selection, the switch only works at the frequencies used by DirecTV's LNBs.

There are a few types out there and some may provide the same results as a normal TV splitter (such as the 3 input by 8 output ones), since the extra input is used to pass the over-the-air TV channels on the same coax as the DirecTV signals.

 

[kd5dga]

Thanks for the information.