New House Sky in Attic?

jasgrif11

I'm building a new house and was thinking of putting the sky box in the attic and using a magic eye near the tv. Is this possible has anyone a better solution? I hear of guys running all there cables back to a central location but how do they change the channel if the box is under the stairs?

byte

Have a minimum of 4 CT100 satellite cables to your main TV point. This will allow for Sky+ (in the future if not now), Terrestrial feed, and a feed from the box back to distribution point, so it can be distributed around the house.

If the box is beside your main telly, then you will avail of better RGB Scart pictures and stereo sound on the main telly. This wouldhn't be feasible if the box was away in the attic.

Owen

jasgrif11 wrote:

I'm building a new house and was thinking of putting the sky box in the attic and using a magic eye near the tv. Is this possible has anyone a better solution?

Well that's a bad idea. What happens if a Cable decides to overheat & die, or your water tank leaks, or you need to remove and re-insert your card? Not to mention the crap picture quality you'll have just using a coax cable and a magic eye. I can see no benefit to what you ask, you're going to have to run a cable to the TV anyway, why not make it the Sat cable, and just have the box on top of the TV?

jasgrif11 wrote:

I hear of guys running all there cables back to a central location but how do they change the channel if the box is under the stairs?

You can use remote control amplifiers/repeaters.

jasgrif11

Thanks Guys,

My plan is to install a Plasma tv and run a 2" conduit inside the wall down to the floor (during the build) where i plan to have a side board with the sky+ box on it. Therefore I can pass scart/HDMI etc up the conduit if I need. The reason I asked about the attic was if I could place the Sky box elsewhere and still get the same quality and reception I would.

Thanks

Tony

The attic is the last place you should put a sky box or any other electronic item.

XDA2prisoner

Dont put sky box to far from main tv as cabling is where a lot of picture degradation sneaks in, have u seen the prices of a Quality 5 meter HDMI/Scart cable

snaps

I really dont understand this at all? Why do you want it in the attic? If its cable your worried about all you need is one sat cable running to the back of the tv from roof/outside? You will have full control of your box as well.

Have you fallen off you attic ladder and knocked your head?

Perhaps im wrong and there is a genuine reason you want to have this set up in your attic?

jasgrif11

I was just trying to find ways of not having the sky box in the room. ie. if I wanted a plasma screen on the wall with no visable boxes or wires in the area what would be best?

snaps

Now I see where your coming from! Perhaps it would be best to have the sky box some were accesable in the room but hidden?

Battery99

I was thinking of doing something similar. As far as I can see as long as you don't lose the remote control there should be no need to have acsess to the sky box.
I was thinking it probably would be a good idea to fit a switch downstairs to control the socket in the attic, to switch the box off at night etc.. Even a smoke alarm in the attic just in case.

Tony

Battery99 wrote:

I was thinking of doing something similar. As far as I can see as long as you don't lose the remote control there should be no need to have acsess to the sky box.

Thats simply wrong I'm afraid, you lose RGB, digital audio output, stereo sound but the most pressing reason is an attic is a poor environment for an electronic item and will severely lessen the life of the unit. Cutting power to the box may mean losing software updates.

stanley1

Yep, attic is no place for electronics, I left an amplifier in attic last winter and when i went to plug it in it just fizzled and died, damp etc.

pH

A couple of options:

If the panel is going on an internal wall then consider what room is behind the TV. It may be possible to put the sky box neatly in a cupboard just behind the panel make a hole to get cable through. As one side of the hole is behind the panel and the other is in a cupboard then it's invisible.

Put the panel over a neat sideboard and put your equipment in there.

Both options will need some sort of IR repeater, but these are common nowdays with wired and wireless versions available.

A new panel is going to show up every defect in the Sky picture, to be honest you need the RGB (via SCART) signal over as short a piece of cable as possible to avoid degrading the picture even further.