Can you guys offer any help?

Zhane · 05-11-2005 11:21pm #1

I was wondering if you guys will offer some technical help to me. I live out in the middle of nowhere and only able to get RTE, and TV3 through the ariel on the roof. We have Sky+ and got a FTV card(which we switch when we wanna watch Channel 4 or 5) from friends in Scotland. But now we kinda wanna expand the digital platforms to every tv in the house. Iv been looking into FTA systems, which would seem our best option i think anyway. I'm gonna look into getting one in Lidl next time they have them in. But the thing thats holding me back is the dish. and now comes the question, Can i connect and FTA reciever up to the sky dish(we have multiroom, i dunno how many recievers you can connect up to one dish) and how would i do that? or would it be better to buy a seperate dish and run the fta systems off that and how easy would it be to set the whole thing up myself? Or can you explain what i need to do exactly? Thanks in advance if you can answer.

ps. This is the longest post iv posted i think:rolleyes:

bigpaddy2004 · 05-11-2005 11:41pm

The best thing you could do firstly is connect your existing terrestrial antenna up to a distribution amp and run a drop to every room from it so as every room will have clear terrestrial picture. Next thing you could do is bring a return drop from either your sky+ box or multiroom box back to the input of the distribution amp, you may have to put a splitter there to allow the terrestrial antenna also. This will allow all four irish stations and one sky subscription channel in each room. Next you could put up a new sky dish with quad lnb and place 4 or 5 second hand sky box's in any available rooms within the house. This method would allow all four irish terrestrial channels to be viewed independantly in every room in the house, it would also allow viewing of whatever channel the sky subscription box is on in everyroom, and last of all in everyroom you could independantly watch over 100 fta channels including all bbc's and itv channels!

Sorry it's so long winded...:v:

jonnygee · 06-11-2005 9:48am

Zhane, how many tv,s in total have you got in the house and how many of these can you watch sky on at the moment. also how many of these can you watch rte on at the moment.

Zhane · 06-11-2005 5:55pm

jonnygee wrote:

Zhane, how many tv,s in total have you got in the house and how many of these can you watch sky on at the moment. also how many of these can you watch rte on at the moment.

we have 5 tvs in the house. 3 in each bedroom, and 1 in the sitting room and kitchen. We can watch RTE in all from the roof areial and watch sky but its only the channel thats being watched from the box downstairs. Tho we have multiroom in one of the bedrooms. I really only want it for the BBCs and ITVs really.

jonnygee · 06-11-2005 8:40pm

Sorry zhane I have to rush out to work now,maybe bigpaddy couldhelp further now that we know better what you setup is.I will come back to thread tomorrow night.

jonnygee · 07-11-2005 3:23pm

Zhane, big paddy.s advice to put up another minidish with quad lnb (that means it has 4 outputs) is exactly what you should choose to do if you intend to run 5 recievers in the house. You are going to have to put up another dish of some kind anyway to run the 5th box so you might as well put up a tried and tested minidish. If you do buy one try to ensure that it is what is known as a zone 2 dish which is the correct one for Ireland.

Tony · 07-11-2005 3:28pm

or you could go with a standard triax dish and octo (8 way) LNB

jonnygee · 08-11-2005 1:30am

Hello Zhane, Im Back, Im sorry I have just realised that I/we havent answered all the questions in your post.
You asked if you could connect fta recievers to a sky dish, yes you can.
You asked how would you do that, by running new cables from the lnb on the arm of your dish to whatever rooms you want to put the new recievers in.
You asked if you should install a new dish for fta channels, if you want to run 5 recievers then your options are to A:Install a new good quality dish with either a single LNB (One output) B:Twin lnb (2 outputs) C: A Quad lnb (4 outputs) this would most likely be a sky minidish or D:Tony,s suggestion of a Triax (good quality) dish with an lnb that can provide 8 outputs.
You asked if it would be easy to do this yourself. My honest answer would be
(at the moment) NO. If you want to get this done soon then you should engage a professional installer to carry out the work for you. There are many safety issues involved here.
I think this answers all your queries

There is just one other thing, the choice of recievers you decide to buy is entirley up to you. Do research all the different types available, there are advantages and disadvantages to most.

webbie · 08-11-2005 10:42am

Just to clarify one thing, you actually need 6 outputs in total for what you are trying to do. The Sky+ box uses 2, your multiroom sky box uses 1 and each of your 3 FTA boxes will need 1 each.

So with your existing dish you only have one output left which can be used for one of the FTA boxes, but for the other two you either need a 2nd dish with either twin or quad LNBs or replace the current dish with a Triax with an octo LNB to feed all the boxes.

To connect up one FTA box to your last remaining output on the existing dish is very straight forward all it requires is running a cable between the box and the dish and fixing a couple of connectors to it. However to install a new or replacement dish is a little bit trickier so it really depends on how DIY savvy you are.

Can you guys offer any help?

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