NTL in my new house

cormthechippy

Howsa goin, we're doing massive renovations, bascially building a new house! The first fix electrics are in place, and we have all the co-ax cables from the bedrooms and other rooms, all linking in to a press in the utility room, in the centre of the house. I think theres roughly 10 seperate points fitted in the house.

Does anyone know how ntl will wire these up? Surely we wouldn't be charged for 10 additional points? Would we be better to have them run a standard co-ax cable in to the utility, and buy a spitter ourselves? I don't want snowy grainy pictures on all the tellies then. The cable modem is also going to be located in this press, would we want a seperate feed from the soffit so as not to loose signal? Cheers.

The tax man

Get them to run a cable from the tap to the utility room.If this involves feeding cables down through walls etc you may be just given the cable and told to run it yourself and ring us when in place so it can be connected up at each end. On the other hand they may do it themselves.
With this type of setup NTL will only be responsible for the signal quality at the utility room and NO further. The run of cable to all the points have nothing to do with NTL and therefore if your reception is poor on certain points around the house,tough, get who ever wired the place back to check it out.NTL would show you the picture quality arriving at your utility room by hooking up a TV. Downside to this sort of thing is that the builder\electrician won't have a signal meter to check where the problems are and they'll just go around checking all connections etc.


As for the amp in the utility room,10 points in the house means a nice big 10way amp.And for the love of god get one with some sort of gain control on it.Stay clear of those fixed gain amps. And make sure the amp has a frequency range up to at least 400mhz or above. Alot of them cut off around 230mhz which are no good for NTL.
As for the cable modem NTL again will only make sure it works at the NTL point.Signal is split from the NTL point,one feeding the modem the other would feed the amp so the one cable from outside would do for both.
Best to feed modem into a wireless router.

Hope that answers a few things for you.

cormthechippy

that's absolutely magic, cheers for that advice.

bazzer

Please make sure your builder has put a proper RF distribution system in place. When working for NTL a few years ago I saw a case where a builder had installed a bog-standard electrical wire splitter in a utility room to feed the TV cable around the house...... but it just doesn't work like that. The punter was querying the quality of the picture on one of his six TVs - I had to remind him that NTL only guarantees a reasonable signal quality as far as the outlet box and no more.

thund3rbird_

beware if using an amp

it probably will not allow the return signal for the cable modem to pass back onto the ntl network.

decide now what room you want the modem in & run a dedicated co-ax (make sure it's double sheathed RG11) to the room where the modem is going to be

Freddie59

cormthechippy wrote:

Howsa goin, we're doing massive renovations, bascially building a new house! The first fix electrics are in place, and we have all the co-ax cables from the bedrooms and other rooms, all linking in to a press in the utility room, in the centre of the house. I think theres roughly 10 seperate points fitted in the house.

Does anyone know how ntl will wire these up? Surely we wouldn't be charged for 10 additional points? Would we be better to have them run a standard co-ax cable in to the utility, and buy a spitter ourselves? I don't want snowy grainy pictures on all the tellies then. The cable modem is also going to be located in this press, would we want a seperate feed from the soffit so as not to loose signal? Cheers.

Under NO circumstances use an internal amplifier. The quality of these things varies wildly. And they're not cheap. AFAIK NTL have some kind of offer on 2nd points where you only pay to have them installed. They will probably then supply and industry standard amplifier. Taxman is right about running the cables back say to a utility room. If there are 10 points there should be 10 leads arriving back. If not the sparks will have 'daisy chained' the points and the reception will be dire. And if I was you I'd run a direct cable from the dIstribution room to the PC room. NTL will connect a standalone connection to it for you.

Run 2 leads back from the main TV point. It will allow you to run your vcr around the house. Make sure you use a cable with two screens on it (sparks will know). This will minimise the chances of picking up interference from off-air RTE.;)

cormthechippy

Cheers for all the advice lads. I'm getting a bit confused with it all though! Basically, let ntl sort out wires from the main tap to my utility room? The modem is going there too, all the CAT5 cables link back to there where the router will go, along with the modem of course. I suppose two seperate feeds from the tap, one for the modem and one for all the telly points, which yes, are all wired seperately and back to the utility room also, so theres around 10 co-ax cables back there! Some people are saying get a distribution box, others aren't?? Will ntl have some box of sorts that will split the single tv feed from the tap to the utility room to 10points around the house? Cheers, don't wanna be going round in circles here!

The tax man

cormthechippy wrote:

Cheers for all the advice lads. I'm getting a bit confused with it all though! Basically, let ntl sort out wires from the main tap to my utility room? The modem is going there too, all the CAT5 cables link back to there where the router will go, along with the modem of course. I suppose two seperate feeds from the tap, one for the modem and one for all the telly points, which yes, are all wired seperately and back to the utility room also, so theres around 10 co-ax cables back there! Some people are saying get a distribution box, others aren't?? Will ntl have some box of sorts that will split the single tv feed from the tap to the utility room to 10points around the house? Cheers, don't wanna be going round in circles here!

Check your PM box.;)