Rough idea of cost of two point FTA sat setup?

TM

Hope it's OK to post this sort of query...

I'm just trying to get rough price on the following setup:

- dish which needs to be mounted on the back wall of a house whose front faces south east (if you get what I mean here!?)
- dual or quad LNB
- cable runs from the dish ideally into/across attic space and down the front of the house to...
- one point/receiver box in front bedroom
- on point/receiver box in front living room
- ideally a terrestrial aerial (for terrestrial analog channels) also installed with the signal muxed onto the same cable runs if that's possible

I don't have specific measurements on the cable runs yet but it's an average terraced townhouse so nothing too outrageous as far as I can see.

Does that all make sense? Any ideas of a ballpark figure including installation? Technically I'd be capable of installing it myself (well other than the satellite & terrestrial "muxing" perhaps!?) but unfortunately the little matter of getting up a ladder to install/alighn the bracket/dish/aerial etc. would defeat me...

Compton

my friend got the exact same system but minus the arial, for 385 installed.

TM

Thanks shblob - I figured that it might be coming in around €400 or so alright. Any other opinions/suggestions welcome.

I'm in D7 so perhaps the analog aerial might not be essential and a set top one might do? Just not sure how you have both that feed and the satellite feed going into a single TV (probably a dumb question around here!?!)?

Rippy

TM wrote: »

I'm in D7 so perhaps the analog aerial might not be essential and a set top one might do? Just not sure how you have both that feed and the satellite feed going into a single TV (probably a dumb question around here!?!)?

By no means a dumb question, we get some real howlers here!
If satellite box has a RF modulator, the aerial can go into the sat box, lead goes from sat box to TV aerial socket, the output frequency of the sat.box is then tuned on the tv along with the terrestrial chs. Far better to coonect the sat box with a scart lead however, and leave the aerial in the TV.

TM

Thanks - that makes sense.

Further to that - for two sat receivers you need two separate cable runs connecting the receiver with its LNB output - correct?

For the terrestrial aerial do you have just one cable run and "tap off" it for each of the two TVs?

Basically this means three cable runs in all?

TM

Another question - as I understand it the difference between a HD and SD FTA satellite setup is just the receiver box - i.e. not the dish/LNB. Correct?

If so is there much point in going for a HD rather than SD setup right now? As far as I can see on Lyngsat only one BBC channel is HD right now on Astra/Eurobird/28.2E.

For what it's worth I'm not somebody who has a 50"+ TV or is that interested in HD per se other than how its adoption and the possible obsolescence of SD might be concerned.

The estimates that I'm getting for the setup outlined above (including terrestrial antenna) from suppliers mentioned in the suppliers sticky thread are more around the €500-600 mark.

byte

TM wrote: »

Another question - as I understand it the difference between a HD and SD FTA satellite setup is just the receiver box - i.e. not the dish/LNB. Correct?

If so is there much point in going for a HD rather than SD setup right now? As far as I can see on Lyngsat only one BBC channel is HD right now on Astra/Eurobird/28.2E.

For what it's worth I'm not somebody who has a 50"+ TV or is that interested in HD per se other than how its adoption and the possible obsolescence of SD might be concerned.

The estimates that I'm getting for the setup outlined above (including terrestrial antenna) from suppliers mentioned in the suppliers sticky thread are more around the €500-600 mark.

Yeah, only the receiver differs.

At the moment, there aren't a colossal amount of HD boxes out there, not compared to SD boxes anyway. HD boxes with RF modulator for running thru to other rooms are even rarer.

Since you're not really interested in HD at this time, maybe best to just get SD boxes for now, since they're so cheap. Won't be hard to upgrade in a few years or so, if you wish to, and the HD boxes will probably be cheaper by then anyway, with a wider variety of both hardware and HD channels.

Apart from BBCHD, there is also LuxeHD and the parttime ITVHD (can be awkward to tune into a FTA box, but usually possible). Only BBCHD is worth watching though at this time.

byte

TM wrote: »

Thanks - that makes sense.

Further to that - for two sat receivers you need two separate cable runs connecting the receiver with its LNB output - correct?

For the terrestrial aerial do you have just one cable run and "tap off" it for each of the two TVs?

Basically this means three cable runs in all?

If you're running two satellite receivers, it's best to have each receiver wired directly to the dish using a dual or quad LNB.

And yeah, a splitter would do to split the terrestrial signal between the two rooms, assuming your incoming terrestrial signal is good (ie. not requiring boosters)

TM

Thanks byte - just curious - do you have any opinion on the OAS 440 flat "dish" mentioned in this thread?

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055369654

If that worked for my location (D7) then I'd go for it, see about upgrading it with a dual LNB and do a DIY job. Otherwise, mainly because of the dish mounting issues (involving ladders etc. ) I'd go with a professional setup.

byte

I've never used any flatpanel dishes myself, or seen one in use (and I get around a fair bit), so I can't really comment on it.