Activating TV sockets in every room??

eirebhoy

When my house was renovated recently the electrician but 7 TV sockets around the house. I ordered NTL today (€20 a month) thinking once it was installed all the sockets would be active. I came home from work and there is some sort of box covering the socket where the digibox is connected to. It's hard to explain but I doubt I need to explain for someone to give me an answer.

Is it not possible to activate all the TV sockets in my house?

Cheers.

Black Sky

eirebhoy wrote: »

When my house was renovated recently the electrician but 7 TV sockets around the house. I ordered NTL today (€20 a month) thinking once it was installed all the sockets would be active. I came home from work and there is some sort of box covering the socket where the digibox is connected to. There is another little box connected to the other end of the cable downstairs. It's hard to explain but I doubt I need to explain for someone to give me an answer.

Is it not possible to activate all the TV sockets in my house?

Cheers.

Its possible to activate them all.... depends on how they are wired up. Presumably they are all wired back to 1 location, the question is How did upc get to the active wall socket from their cable coming in from outside???

eirebhoy

I've just had a proper look.

There's a box in the hall where all the electrics are. It has 8 inputs for cables. 7 of them are in use for the 7 sockets around the house. Well, 7 of them were in use until today. The NTL guy took one of the cable out (obviously the one connecting to the socket he used), and connected it up to a longer cable which is now running out of my house. It's too dark outside to see where the cable is running but I'll have a look tomorrow.

Black Sky

On the distribution panel for the 7 cables, they have to be 7 "outputs" and then there should be 1 input to feed all the outputs. So Mr "Nice Guy" ntl, just removed the cable for the active socket and connected this cable to his incoming cable so bypassing the distribution panel totally. Probably didn't know or care what it was....

For Digital TV its 1 Digibox per outlet, so main subs ar €20 and then €8.50 per socket for another digibox at that socket - Multiroom Viewing they call it.
The Analog channels are on the cable (assuming Dublin), some channels reception will be poor, but can be got at any connected socket without a digibox, till they are turned off at some stage in next few years....

Whats the input connection type on your panel???

ruprect

Black Sky wrote: »

Probably didn't know or care what it was....

I am sure he did know. They simply would not support some possibly dodgy setup. You are meant to pay for installation in each room etc, no way they would set it up for you, but you could set it up yourself. Then if you complained of poor signal you have no real comeback. In my house we got 4 points installed, €15 each installation and €0 subscription on them was the deal. We wanted 5points installed and they said 4 was the max since after that you could get poor signal strength and they would not be liable. Sounds fair enough to me. We just put our own splitter on one of them and fed to the 5th room. It would be rare that we have more than 3 TVs on anyway.

Now if he somehow damaged your box on purpose that is a different story.

Solair

There's also a limit to the number of points that each 'tap' will support, so if you've too many points hooked up you can degrade your signal and also perhaps some of your neighbours.

Also, remember if you do use a distribution amp that it may not pass all the frequencies through i.e. it may be designed for broadcast TV, not cable. Also, you will need to have your broadband modem / box directly connected to the cable line as it is 2-way and requires a path back to the network again. So, it would not be able to pass through an amp.

If you're in Cork, the network will only carry the 4 basic channels i.e. RTE 1/2, TV3 and TG4 in analogue anyway. Elsewhere it seems they're winding down the analogue service bit by bit. Particularly now that the introductory offer for basic digital is now cheaper than basic analogue and provides more channels. I'd say it won't be too long before you see a switch off / utter minimisation of analogue to the Cork levels elsewhere. The bandwidth will be needed for broadband in particular.

eirebhoy

So how do I go about doing this? I think the electrician might be due back soon to do a couple of things. Should I get him to do it or is it an easy job?

I asked him about it already. He mentioned something about an annual fee of something like €20. I should have listened to him though as I haven't a clue what else he said.

maxg

It must be so hard to connect the ntl cable to the input of the distribution amp and test the whole thing.

eirebhoy

Sorry I haven't a clue what you mean.

maxg

Where do you think the signal is coming from and how should the signal enter your distribution unit?

eirebhoy

Don't know. I think the electrician is back this weekend so I'll ask him anyway.