Wiring setup for new extension

ifah

Hi folks,

I hope this is the correct forum for this - this is my first foray into the ICDG forums and I'm not very satellite literate but am quite diy compatible !

I am currently building an extension to my house (to be tagged the tv/games room) and am looking at what wiring setup I should have to bring Sky etc into the room. My current setup is tv's in three rooms (lounge,kitchen,bedroom).
We have a Sky box and Terrestrial aerial (originally for rte/bbc/utv/ch4) but we don't necessarily need to keep the aerial.

The sky box/aerial are both presented into the lounge and I have coax cable running from here to both the other tv's. So from kitchen and bedroom we can view all terrestrial channels and whatever Sky channel is selected in lounge.

I'm putting in a 42" plasma, home cinema etc. in games room and would like to move the sky box here too and maybe remove the terrestrial aerial (reception isn't great during summer) and replace with FTV box.

My questions are :

Can I use existing sky dish to supply to both boxes (sky and ftv) ?
Would it be possible to present picture from sky box to other tv's ?
Also possibly present picture from FTV box to plasma (although if CH4 is only extra may not do this) ?
What cable runs would I need and what additional equipment (Would it be an additional LNB/sky box/ftv card/cabling)?
Is it difficult to install this setup ?

Many thanks,
ifah

ShaneOC

ifah wrote:

Can I use existing sky dish to supply to both boxes (sky and ftv) ?

Yes this is possible. You will need to change the LNB on the end of the dish to a quad LNB. This will allow you to run up to 4 boxes (or 1 Sky+ box and 2 regular boxes) from the one dish.

ifah wrote:

Would it be possible to present picture from sky box to other tv's ?

It would be possible to pipe the output of both boxes to the other TVs in the house. You would have to reset the RF output on one of the boxes to a new value (they can't both be on the same frequency!) but this is easily done. Then you need to ensure that you have a coaxial cable running from the new TV centre to you distribution point (attic, existing tv room).

ifah wrote:

Also possibly present picture from FTV box to plasma (although if CH4 is only extra may not do this) ?

It's probably easiest to have the two boxes together in the new TV room so that you get the best possible picture from the boxes on the plasma (i.e. scart connections). However it would be possible to have the box in a different room and pipe the signal back to the plasma.

ifah wrote:

What cable runs would I need and what additional equipment (Would it be an additional LNB/sky box/ftv card/cabling)?

I would recommend having 5 coaxial cables into your new extension.

• 1 for existing Sky subsription box (from dish)
• 1 for future upgrade to Sky+ (from dish)
• 1 for FTV box (from dish)
• 1 for terrestrial ariel input
• 1 to carry signal back to distribution point

You should also get the 4th output of the quad LNB wired up to your distribution point so that you could in future use a regular sky box at any of the other TVs by just changing around the wiring at the distribution point.

For all this you will need

• Either a sky+ box to replace your existing box or a second regular box
• A FTV card sourced from the UK
• A quad LNB for the end of the dish
• Loads of good (CT100) satellite coaxial cable
• Various connectors

ifah wrote:

Is it difficult to install this setup ?

Not rocket science. If you are anyway decent at DIY then you should be fine.

ifah

Thanks ShaneOC.

Will get cracking at that this week.