Inherited an enthusiasts' setup ... eeep.

zenith

Hi,

New - to me - house. Lots of kit in place.

I'm trying to decipher what the setup was here before me, so that I can put it back in place. Appreciate any steers.

Loads of RF sockets in the house, which are currently being fed from antenna and Sky box via second RF output on the Sky box. Standard stuff. Basically, they all come back to a distribution point in the 'main tv room'.

However, there is also a "Taylor Broadband Amplifier" with input and output, currently not in line with anything, right next to that setup. It's a wall wart, and it has dials like: Gain, Slope, and frequency 47860MHz. Model is Taylor TS3048. No sign of that model on Google, but it sorta looks like this: http://www.sjgreatdeals.com/teramp15.html

I assume they were doing more than simply distributing single channels around the place - which I am doing with the standard aerial and sky RF output on the Sky box. They could have done that without the broadband amplifier.

Thus, this is making me think that the amplifier might have been used for in-line signal distribution for a set of MMDS boxes.

I think that they may have originally had Chorus Digital or Analog, don't know - there's a mesh arial though there's no sign of the kit that they had, so can't tell if it was analog or digitial. If it's digital, that's a box and a downconverter power supply, isn't it? If I needed to test it I'd have to borrow both bits from a subscriber?

Analog is a bit of a dying service, so ideally I'd like to go digital - how can I tell that the setup is ok for digital - I'd like the freedom to put the receivers wherever I like, for example.

I'm not in a position to borrow a box really, as I don't know any neighbours that actually have the service at present ...

zenith

From scrutinising other houses on the way to work this morning, it looks like I don't have a downconverter on the MMDS arial - that seems to be kinda like a yellow bar on the 'feedhorn', for lack of a better word. So, pretty positive that it's analog.

So, is the Broadband Amplifier going to have to be ripped out of the new digital setup that I'm going to have to order, or will with work with digital too in a multiroom setup?

John1000

A broadband amplifier is for vhf+uhf, so your probably right that is was used to
distrbute the MMDS signal around the house. I think that the MMDS aerial
with the integrated downconverter is used for digital mmds and also the
broadband amplifier is ok for digital.
Hope that helps.

zenith

Thanks John,

Nice to get a second opinion. I've a call in to Chorus, to see if they can get me set up - not pushed about when they do it as we have sky atm, but will get rid of that when they get it in.