Would this be non-standard installation or hard to do??

dlambirl

Right, let me explain....

I've built a new house and the way that the electrician wired it was all all TV, sound and telephone points went back to the one point (in the eaves upstairs).

Our electrician explained that the sky box would be in the eave not under the tv and that the sky channel would be on all tvs and could be changed (i assume by those magic eye yokes) from each tv (i know that if you changed it on one telly it would change on them all)

So would it be hard to install sky+ with the way that its wired??

I mean, the sky box at my mates is under the tv with a scart cable going from the sky+ box to the tv - what does the scart cable do? if my sky+ box was in the eaves how would that work?? Cant run a scart cable from the eave 20m to the tv??

Another question... would you call this a non -standard installation? Would sky installers do this or would it be better to get an independant, cos to me it sounds complicated and confusing!!!

Thanks in advance for any replies...

TVDX

From what I can make out not knowing what an "eaves" is, you have your Sky box away from your TV and it is distributing the signal to the rest of the TV's over RF.
By viewing the box this way, the picture quality will never be at it's best.
It might come in handy for you this way but I personally wouldn't be able to watch it without being distracted by the low quality non RGB video.
The scart simply carries video and audio to whatever destination be it TV, DVD recorder etc.
I would take the subscription card out of the box and leave it there as a video distributor. You will then have free channels only on this receiver and there are alot of them and quality too.
In terms of Sky+, as much as it might seem like hassle, you would be much better off getting a quad LNB(runs up to four digiboxes)and then run new coaxial to the Sky+ box which ideally needs to be under your TV.
You need at least two coaxial wires run for the Sky+ and the installer can leave the box in the eaves hooked up as well.
I know when your building a new house it's nice to have all these things sorted but I don't believe loft installation for a digibox at least for video quality is recommended.

mickdw

dlambirl wrote: »

Right, let me explain....

I've built a new house and the way that the electrician wired it was all all TV, sound and telephone points went back to the one point (in the eaves upstairs).

Our electrician explained that the sky box would be in the eave not under the tv and that the sky channel would be on all tvs and could be changed (i assume by those magic eye yokes) from each tv (i know that if you changed it on one telly it would change on them all)

So would it be hard to install sky+ with the way that its wired??

I mean, the sky box at my mates is under the tv with a scart cable going from the sky+ box to the tv - what does the scart cable do? if my sky+ box was in the eaves how would that work?? Cant run a scart cable from the eave 20m to the tv??

Another question... would you call this a non -standard installation? Would sky installers do this or would it be better to get an independant, cos to me it sounds complicated and confusing!!!

Thanks in advance for any replies...

What your electrican has done is pretty typical except that he should have run 3/4 cables down to the sockets where you might position the tv and sky box. It might still be possible to pull another cable down through the conduit at the location you would like the sky box. There may also be another tv point nearby (perhaps on the other side of the wall in another room) this cable could be connected through to the sky box location also.

To locate sky box at tv and to redistribute the signal to other tvs you would need:

1 co axial from dish to sky box (so thats 1 cable coming to tv location)
1 co axial from sky box to eaves to distribute via existing cables ( so thats 2 cables coming to tv location)
1 co axial if you have a tv aerial feeding to tv (so thats 3)
1 additional cable for sky+ (so 4 total)

Tony

Its a real pity that a lot electricians typicially do not understand picture and sound quality issues when locating distribution cabling.

watty

@ Tony: You are obviously very relaxed to night to write that so calmly.

This set up is daft.

John mac

I agree with Watty . (glad you changed back your avatar btw)

you wont get stereo sound from that setup either!

I hope you are not using a nice flat panel lcd or plasma either.

dlambirl

John mac wrote: »

I agree with Watty . (glad you changed back your avatar btw)

you wont get stereo sound from that setup either!

I hope you are not using a nice flat panel lcd or plasma either.

Why? Cos the picture is gonna be Sh!te??!!

Tony

dlambirl wrote: »

Why? Cos the picture is gonna be Sh!te??!!

It will be RF quality so not as good as connecting via a scart or HDMI cable and will be in mono.

dlambirl

So what do you recommend i do??

The aerial coming to all the tvs in the house only has 1 outlet btw

Darth Maul

dlambirl wrote: »

So what do you recommend i do??

The aerial coming to all the tvs in the house only has 1 outlet btw

The amount of outlets on the wallplate is irrelevant, its the amount of cable behind it that counts,

ideal situation for you would be at least 3 behind the one for the main TV, 2 for sky plus and 1 return. As was said before you may be able to pull another cable or 2 down if you have access to the wall above.
I just built a house recently and I wired all the TV points my self, the electrician was flabergasted by the amount of cable I had brought to the main TV, 6, he would of only brought 1 or 2 if requested.
When I said what about sky +, he said sure they can bring that in through the wall outside it wasn't even an outside wall.

oh the reason I brought 6 was
2 for SKY,
1 for return
1 for aerial
1 for Non 28.2 satellite
and 1 spare.

dlambirl

so realistically i'd need 4 cables going to the main tv in the living room? I dunno if they'd all fit in the conduit

So the return cable......where does this go to?? back to the booster box??

kbell

Yes.
It carries the rf signal back to your distribution amp which then feeds the other tvs in the house.

dlambirl

right o. thanks!!

Buffer

dlambirl wrote: »

So what do you recommend i do??

The aerial coming to all the tvs in the house only has 1 outlet btw

I don't think the situation is necessarily as bad as what some posters here are saying.

Are you sure the intention was to put a single Sky box in the attic? More usually (if cables from the sat dish don't just come through external walls), a signal distributor (multisiwtch) would go in the attic, to distribute the signals from your aerial and sat dish to multiple rooms.

This would be done via a single digital-quality coax cable to each room, or two cables for Sky+ (so that you can record and watch different channels).

In this case, however, you have to have a separate satellite box (Sky, freesat, or whatever) in each room, and but you can watch different channels in each room, with stereo sound and in hi-def (assuming that's supported).

The key question is: exactly what kind of cabling has been run from the attic to each TV? If it's digital coax, then I think this kind of design is what was intended, not some weird design where there's a single sat box and the outputs are distributed all over the place.

Buffer.

Tony

The facts as stated by the OP would indicate it is, I seriously doubt his/her electrician even knows what a multiswitch is. As happens all too frequently the electrician is woring the house but not supplying the set top box, in other words he does not have to make it work.

Buffer wrote: »

I don't think the situation is necessarily as bad as what some posters here are saying.

Buffer

Tony wrote: »

The facts as stated by the OP would indicate it is, I seriously doubt his/her electrician even knows what a multiswitch is. As happens all too frequently the electrician is woring the house but not supplying the set top box, in other words he does not have to make it work.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the electrician! All I'm saying is that if the electrician ran digital coax from the attic to each room, the situation can be remedied by using a multiswitch in the attic taking its feeds from the aerial and a four-output LNB, and connecting the rooms to this.

Tony

Fair enough but I've yet to see an electrician use the proper quality cable. Another problem may be there is no provision for PVR's or return UHF path to watch the main box in another room. What would you define as "Digital Quality cable" ?

Buffer wrote: »

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the electrician! All I'm saying is that if the electrician ran digital coax from the attic to each room, the situation can be remedied by using a multiswitch in the attic taking its feeds from the aerial and a four-output LNB, and connecting the rooms to this.

Buffer

Tony wrote: »

Fair enough but I've yet to see an electrician use the proper quality cable. Another problem may be there is no provision for PVR's or return UHF path to watch the main box in another room.

Yes, it's definitely a limited setup. My point was only that it might be possible to come up with an arrangement where the OP gets full-quality independent sat TV in each room, without having to pull extra cables. He definitely won't get to use Sky+ or a PVR, as you said.

Tony wrote: »

What would you define as "Digital Quality cable" ?

Double-shielded coax with braid, foil and plastic inner layers, I suppose. I'm sure you could advise the OP much better than I can about what kind of cable he'd have to have in place.

Buffer.

dlambirl

hi everyone.

Thanks buffer for your suggestions. Unfortuntely i havent a clue what type of coax the electrician has used and he hasnt supplied a multi-switch. Would he supply it or the person doing the tvs?

Tony

Take a look at the cable the serial no. should appear every meter.

dlambirl wrote: »

hi everyone.

Thanks buffer for your suggestions. Unfortuntely i havent a clue what type of coax the electrician has used and he hasnt supplied a multi-switch. Would he supply it or the person doing the tvs?

dlambirl

Tony wrote: »

Take a look at the cable the serial no. should appear every meter.

Right oh i'll do that this evening.

So hypothetically...... if it was good quality cable what would i need to get high quality digital picture in all the tvs in the house? Would i be able to use the Sky+ recording facility?

Tony

As my friend says a multiswitch would be your best option. You need two cables to make use of the recording facility.

dlambirl wrote: »

Right oh i'll do that this evening.

So hypothetically...... if it was good quality cable what would i need to get high quality digital picture in all the tvs in the house? Would i be able to use the Sky+ recording facility?

staker

i know lads using stackers/destackers for the sky+ set up on one existing cable.
would they not be an option for the OP if running extra interior cables isn't plausible?
haven't used them myself yet but feedback so far has been good...

Tony

Again depends on the quality of the cabling, the stacker works buy doubling the frequency and the higher the frequency the more loss you get per metre.

staker wrote: »

i know lads using stackers/destackers for the sky+ set up on one existing cable.
would they not be an option for the OP if running extra interior cables isn't plausible?
haven't used them myself yet but feedback so far has been good...

dlambirl

Hi again,

Eventually got around to check the cable used in the new house. This is what was written on the cable:

RG6 High Performance 2.25GHZ Digital Cable 0.41m

So..... what position am i in now (keep in mind that i'm an absolute retard when it comes to cable and i havent a clue what PVR is!!)

Thanks in advance everyone for trying to help me.

I really want to have my new house wired right to have good quality picture and sound and to use Sky+ (its the best!!)

Thanks again,

dlambirl

dlambirl

Tony??

Buffer??

Buffer

dlambirl wrote: »

Tony??

Buffer??

I don't know cable brands; hopefully Tony can come to the rescue here.

I can tall you what a PVR is! A personal video recorder is basically functionality in a satellite set-top box to record onto hard drive. It came up because you said you wanted Sky+, and that's one of the Sky+ features. It matters because it requires two cables to come into the room: one for the channel you're watching and the other for the channel you're recording.

People mentioned stackers/destackers because these allow you to take the signals from two separate inputs, "stack" them so they can be carried along one physical cable from your attic to your TV point, and "destack" them to get two separate outputs again. Tony pointed out the drawbacks: the loss of signal quality is higher, and since the amount of loss depends on the length of the cable, this will work best with high-quality cable and short cable runs.

Pardon me if I'm over-explaining all this, but if you've missed out on some of the basics, you probably had a hard time understanding advice people were offering.

Buffer.

Buffer

Dlambirl,

There is one other important factor in all this that I don't think you've mentioned: what exactly is the current situation?

Is your house finished or are you at first fix stage right now?
Has the electrician left the job or are you still talking to him about his work?
Does the electrician think it's feasible to run extra cables?

If you have to make do with the cabling you have, then you may have to use stackers and the rest. However, if you can run extra cables and/or replace the cables already installed, that's a different situation. In that case, you might want to 'future proof' your house by running extra cables to each TV point, and planning for mulitple TV points in different corners of key rooms. (My better half gets bored and rearranges the furniture!)

Buffer.

dlambirl

Buffer wrote: »

Dlambirl,

There is one other important factor in all this that I don't think you've mentioned: what exactly is the current situation?

Is your house finished or are you at first fix stage right now?
Has the electrician left the job or are you still talking to him about his work?
Does the electrician think it's feasible to run extra cables?

If you have to make do with the cabling you have, then you may have to use stackers and the rest. However, if you can run extra cables and/or replace the cables already installed, that's a different situation. In that case, you might want to 'future proof' your house by running extra cables to each TV point, and planning for mulitple TV points in different corners of key rooms. (My better half gets bored and rearranges the furniture!)

Buffer.

My current situation is the second fix is complete and we are in the process of getting things together to move in - hense getting the tv aerial up and running cos god forbid having no tv for a few nights!! I think we'll be able to run 3 extra cables through the conduit in the living room where we could put the sky+ box and return it to the cupboard upstairs.

With regards to having multiple TV points - alot of the rooms have them (e.g. in the living room and sitting room there are tv points either side of the fireplace) I wouldnt have to run extra cables to all the tv points in the house would i??

Tony

If you are able to run extra cables use better quality than rg 6 eg wf100 tx 100 etc

dlambirl wrote: »

My current situation is the second fix is complete and we are in the process of getting things together to move in - hense getting the tv aerial up and running cos god forbid having no tv for a few nights!! I think we'll be able to run 3 extra cables through the conduit in the living room where we could put the sky+ box and return it to the cupboard upstairs.

With regards to having multiple TV points - alot of the rooms have them (e.g. in the living room and sitting room there are tv points either side of the fireplace) I wouldnt have to run extra cables to all the tv points in the house would i??

Buffer

dlambirl wrote: »

My current situation is the second fix is complete and we are in the process of getting things together to move in - hense getting the tv aerial up and running cos god forbid having no tv for a few nights!! I think we'll be able to run 3 extra cables through the conduit in the living room where we could put the sky+ box and return it to the cupboard upstairs.

With regards to having multiple TV points - alot of the rooms have them (e.g. in the living room and sitting room there are tv points either side of the fireplace) I wouldnt have to run extra cables to all the tv points in the house would i??

I don't mean this impolitely, but I think you need to do some more planning about what exactly you need, and some reading up on all this for yourself. You shouldn't rely on Boards for your answers; people generally give very good advice, but you need a shared understanding of the context.

I say this because firstly, Sky uses a satellite dish, not an aerial. An aerial is for terrestrial TV, which means RTE/TV3/TG4 or some other systems such as NTL.

Secondly, if you want both terrestrial TV and Sky at a TV point, you need to run a separate cable for each, or use some system to send both signals over one cable.

Thirdly, for each separate TV point where you want Sky+ (watch & record), you need two satellite cables, and if you add in your terrestrial TV from the aerial, that makes 3 cables.

Finally, you should not need to return the signal from the Sky box to the attic -- this would be a strange way of doing things. The normal way of doing things is to have a separate Sky box (or free-to-air satellite box) at each separate TV point; you can watch different channels on each one.

dlambirl

Tony wrote: »

If you are able to run extra cables use better quality than rg 6 eg wf100 tx 100 etc

Is the cable that the electrician not good quality??
This cable is used throughout the house

Buffer wrote: »

I don't mean this impolitely, but I think you need to do some more planning about what exactly you need, and some reading up on all this for yourself. You shouldn't rely on Boards for your answers; people generally give very good advice, but you need a shared understanding of the context.

I say this because firstly, Sky uses a satellite dish, not an aerial. An aerial is for terrestrial TV, which means RTE/TV3/TG4 or some other systems such as NTL.

Secondly, if you want both terrestrial TV and Sky at a TV point, you need to run a separate cable for each, or use some system to send both signals over one cable.

Thirdly, for each separate TV point where you want Sky+ (watch & record), you need two satellite cables, and if you add in your terrestrial TV from the aerial, that makes 3 cables.

Finally, you should not need to return the signal from the Sky box to the attic -- this would be a strange way of doing things. The normal way of doing things is to have a separate Sky box (or free-to-air satellite box) at each separate TV point; you can watch different channels on each one.

Buffer, i know that i'll need both a terrestrial aerial and sky dish. I have tried to research my situation but i havent got much useful information - i just through boards.ie could shed some light on the situation. Sorry, i dont mean to be relying on it.

I dont understand tvs at all...so i dont understand if i have to return the signal to the attic or not. I know my stupidness is completely annoying to someone who knows what they are talking about but i just wanted to find out what i need to do to have the tvs the way i want them.

Re: having a sky box at each tv - am i right in saying that this would require 1 cable (2 for sky+) going from the dish to the tv point. There are 8 tvs in the house so that would mean and 8 or 16 lnb?!! and is this not sky multiroom? i havent a phoneline in my house so i cant go down this route (or wont cos its too expensive)

Buffer, i'm sorry for all the questions. I just wanted someone to help me see how to get my set up in the house able to do what i want it. That way when the Tv installer comes i can at least explain what i want or have some of the work done (if i need to run an extra wire or two)

Sorry again, if you just want me to fu*k off.....then just tell me where to go.

I appreciate your help.

Tony

dlambirl wrote: »

Is the cable that the electrician not good quality??
This cable is used throughout the house

Its not cable I would use as its not up to CAI standard but may well be ok if the runs are not too long, why take the chance, take the opportunity to at least get a good set up on your main tv.

dlambirl

Ok thanks Tony

Buffer

Hi,
I was away for a few days and under time pressure still, but here are a couple of quick responses ...

dlambirl wrote: »

I dont understand tvs at all...so i dont understand if i have to return the signal to the attic or not.

No,you don't.

dlambirl wrote: »

Re: having a sky box at each tv - am i right in saying that this would require 1 cable (2 for sky+) going from the dish to the tv point. There are 8 tvs in the house so that would mean and 8 or 16 lnb?!!

Not exactly. Take a look at this thread.

dlambirl wrote: »

and is this not sky multiroom? i havent a phoneline in my house so i cant go down this route (or wont cos its too expensive)

If you want to have separate channels on the separate TVs, you need a separate set-top box for each one.

If you are happy to have the same thing on all TVs, then it probably would be a lot easier to use a wireless video sender, rather than coming up with some crazy system where you relay signals back to the attic, split them up, and transmit them to the other TVs. (Other threads on this forum have recommendations for video senders.)

However, don't forget that there is more to satellite TV than Sky. Take a read of some of the threads about free-to-air satellite or freesat. This is fully legal -- you buy a non-sky satellite box for a once-off price and with it you can receive a good range of basic channels.

A pretty common configuration is to get Sky for the living room and use FTA receivers in the other rooms.

Hope this helps ...
Buffer.