Advice needed about cables

muffler

I have decided to do a complete refit of all my cables and need a bit of advice.

My present setup is that I have the cables from the sky dish and the roof aerials going straight to digibox in ground floor sitting room. This in turn is connected to the VCR and from there the lead goes down into an splitter/amplifier. At that point I have cables then going to the TV in sitting room, the kitchen and 2 cables running to first floor bedrooms.

A friend of mine has agreed to fit all new cables but the problem I might have is that he is an electrician and admits to having fitted cables only in a couple of new houses in the past. He told me that he would use the same type of cable throughout - the same type of cable that connects the sky dish to the digibox as that is supposed to be the best.

Is this right? I have been round a few friends houses and their setup is much the same as my present one being that the TV aerials use a brown cable while the sky system uses a black cable.

I would really appreciate any help or advice as to what type of cables should be used. I think I also have to get an amplifier fitted up in the attic.

SPAWKER

The only sort of coax to use for sky and any other aerial uaege is CT100 if you can get a roll of it.;)

byte

As Spawker says, CT100 or equivalent is yer only man!

It's copper foil and copper braid. Avoid that brown rubbish with just a tiny bit of braiding, it might be handy for a clothes line or something, but that's about it.

muffler

Thanks guys.

Is the CT100 hard to get?

The cable from the dish to digibox has been there for 12 years and while there are no problems with the picture quality do any of you think that I should replace it also when I am getting the rest of it sorted.

Apologies if my first post sounded a bit funny in relation to a sparky not being sure (or at least thats the impression I have) about the cable. He is a young guy and has a good bit of experience with the normal electrical wiring of houses but I think he has not done too much in relation to ariel/dish set up including cables etc.

watty

Electrians don't generally know about TV/Radio/AV/Sat cable, only mains wire and doorbells.

Replace any cable over ten years old.

Keedowah

and if you plan on having High Def on your big screen - you'll need to run a HDMI lead from the SkyHD box to the plasma. If you plan on having the plasma mounted on a wall and want to hide the wires - you need to think about burying them in the wall.

The Cush

Check out these previous posts on co-ax cables

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054894624
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054909095

muffler

Keedowah wrote:

and if you plan on having High Def on your big screen - you'll need to run a HDMI lead from the SkyHD box to the plasma. If you plan on having the plasma mounted on a wall and want to hide the wires - you need to think about burying them in the wall.

Ah if only I had that trouble

muffler

Thanks again lads. I think the answer to everything is CT100

Any reccommendations as to what type of booster or amplifier I would need for the attic. I have 2 aerials up on the roof, one for BBC, ITV etc and one for RTE etc,
byte will have an idea as Im in Stranorlar not far from the Finn Valley AC premises. Im looking straight at the RTE transmitter/relay out at Edenmore. As the crow flies Im probably about a mile from it and the worse pic I have at the moment is TG4. Strange.

watty

Could be overloading! try an atenuator on the RTE/TG4 aerial
Or it may be for the wrong part of the band.

byte

muffler wrote:

Thanks again lads. I think the answer to everything is CT100

Any reccommendations as to what type of booster or amplifier I would need for the attic. I have 2 aerials up on the roof, one for BBC, ITV etc and one for RTE etc,
byte will have an idea as Im in Stranorlar not far from the Finn Valley AC premises. Im looking straight at the RTE transmitter/relay out at Edenmore. As the crow flies Im probably about a mile from it and the worse pic I have at the moment is TG4. Strange.

Hi Muffler

I don't think you'd need an amplifier for RTE/TG4. You may do for the BBC's from Strabane. Your TG4 picture should be perfect. Is your NI channels good?

A guy I work with lives in Stranorlar, I'll ask him what he uses.

muffler

byte, the N.I. stations are average. UTV would be the worse. They are all watchable but there is still plenty of room for improvement.

I remember having a thread here a couple of months ago about the same problem. I was experiencing a fair loss in picture quality. At that time I took the aerial lead going to the digibox and put it straight into the TV and there was a massive improvemt in the picture quality.

My problem probably is that I have a few leads here and there connecting this and that and all the leads are of a different type so Im going to get the whole thing done from scratch and use the CT100 as recommended

byte

Yes, that is definitely a good start.

There's a place on Port Road, Letterkenny that supply cables and stuff. Can't think of the name of the place now, but "Cable" is part of the name!

muffler

byte wrote:

Yes, that is definitely a good start.

There's a place on Port Road, Letterkenny that supply cables and stuff. Can't think of the name of the place now, but "Cable" is part of the name!

Is that the old Fiesta ballroom premises?

byte

muffler wrote:

Is that the old Fiesta ballroom premises?

Not sure to be honest.

I think it's called Cable & Accessories. From Station Roundabout, it's at the far side of LYIT on same side of road.

cast_iron

What about RG 59 cable?
I know it's not the proper stuff (more for RF, i think), but would it do over, say, a 20m run for a satelite dish?

I think it's what the electricians use alot of the time, and i've a roll of it there somewhere. Thinking of slapping up that motorised setup i have sitting in the shed for a while now.

watty

No. RG59 is'nt even much good for TV. You can use about 2m not 20m for satellite!
Maybe use it for composite video cable or FM radio aerial, nothing else.

Satellite IF feed from LNB to set is about as "RF" as you can get! Above the top satellite RF used on the cable you are getting to point you can't use much cable at all.

RF is anything from 10KHz to 400GHz (0.000001MHz to 400000MHz) using dish or aerial rod or aerial wire.

cast_iron

Thanks Watty, looks like i'll have to buy some cable after all.
And yeah, i think i meant RF like you see RF out on a video or sky box as opposed to the whole spectrum .