The wife and I purchased a new home recently and we are a few weeks away from moving in. We currently have DirecTV service, a pretty basic package with 2 receivers, no dvr or hd.

After a few calls to DirecTV about moving and not currently being under contract with them, I got a killer deal to replace one of my receivers with the HD DVR. I'll finally be able to behold HD on my Panasonic TH-42PZ700U 42-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV which we've had since May (early wedding gift)

Anyway, I am pre-wiring for the DirecTV guy of course because I don't want him touching a thing at the new house. Here are my thoughts on my setup.

From the dish itself, I'm running 3 cables. Two for the HD DVR and one for the second receiver(plain old receiver, no dvr or hd).

Now I have a notion about running another cable from the HD DVR location to the second receiver location and having some type of a coaxial switch box in the room with the second receiver. This way, I can use the HDMI output on the HD DVR box for the plasma but use the s-video out at the same time for the second receiver. So, in all I'd have the following connections:

DISH > HD DVR > HDMI > Plasma
DISH > Second Receiver > Old TV
DISH > HD DVR > S-Video > VCR (for Coaxial Conversion) > Switch box > Old TV

My thought is when I'm in the bedroom and want to watch a recorded show that's on the HD DVR, I'll just hit the switch and watch TV that way. I'd have to get the DirecTV RF Remote to control the receiver in the other room too. And yes, i know I'm doing this no one can be using the plasma.

Has anyone done something like this or know whether it'll work like I'm thinking?

 

All A/V outputs are always active so yes you can connect one with HDMI and the other with component.

You could also connect your SD TV with either S-Video or composite. Any HD program will down-convert to 480i when it leaves those outputs.