Connecting Dish and Cable TV together .. Help!

podgeandrodge

Hoping someone can give me advice on how to proceed with the following:

Have a dish (which is yet to be put up on wall) together with dual lnb/cables etc and 2 receivers. My electrician ran Coax from the front of the house near the NTL down to a box in the hallway. He also ran 3 cables from the 3 TV points to this box. So in the box I have 4 cable ends and outside there is the one loose wire. (The idea was to ask NTL to connect the house via this coax but all they did was run their own cable down the front of the house directly into the main tv room.)

As per the diagram attached what I would like to do, if it were possible, is get the NTL connected to the outside wire (as I can’t figure out how I could split NTL inside the house given that the 3 tv points are already wired) as well as the satellite dish so that I would have NTL at all 3 tv points and satellite in 2 of the locations – using the dual lnb and 2 receivers.

Hope that makes sense! Thanks.

Zaphod

You may need a distribution amp if you want to split the cable signal 3 ways.

2 separate cables will have to come from the two LNBF outputs. These can then be combined with 2 outlets from the cable amp using a diplexer and fed down to the tv room. At the outlet, a diplexer can then be used to uncombine the sat and cable feeds.

Aerial/Cable are equivalent.

podgeandrodge

Thanks Zaphod! Trying to understand so a couple of questions!

1) As 2 cables will have to come from the dual lnb to feed 2 receivers I assume you mean I feed these 2 cables down to the box containing the other wires at the front door – and this is where I would locate Diplexor 1 - how do the 2 LNB cables feed into the dish socket of Diplexor 1? Do they have to get merged before the diplexor?
2) If NTL already connected their own cable directly to downstairs tv, and I have a loose aerial cable hanging outside which leads to Diplexor 1 how do I get the NTL signal to this cable? Or do I have to split the signal in main room and feed that signal to the box at front door also?
3) Does Diplexor 2 just sit at 2 of the tv outlets?

Hope that makes sense, sorry for the confusion!

Sam Radford

You can't combine two LNB feeds into one cable (unless you use a Stacker/destacker system, which I wouldn't recommend).

You can combine one LNB feed and one UHF feed (and VHF/DAB if desired) into one cable.

Here's another sketch: http://www.satcure.co.uk/tech/combiners.htm

Zaphod

Something like this for 3 TVs and 2 receivers.

podgeandrodge

thanks everyone that was very helpful, now I just have to decide on whether to try it myself or pay someone more competent!