Sky multiroom DIY

Tony Ramone

Hey all,
I would have done a search on this topic since it's probably come up before, but the search function is down still.
Anyway, here's my situation:
I recently upgraded to sky+, so we have a spare standard sky box, plus another one that we brought with us when we moved house.
What we'd like to do is set up the other two sky boxes in two bedrooms as freeview boxes (i.e. with no cards installed).
At the moment I'm just trying it out in one room to see how I get on.
At first I thought I could put a regular cable splitter on the cable going to input 1 of the sky+ box (I'm leaving the other cable that the sky dude installed alone), but when I have both TVs on I get really bad signal degradation (as I'm sure you guys would have guessed right away ).
I have seen recently on eBay what seem to be splitters that are designed for satellite (higher frequency range - like this), which I thought I might be able to use in conjunction with a couple of inline signal boosters, but then another seller suggested that the only way to do what I want is to use a multiswitch. Naturally I'm a little dubious, since the multiswitch is more expensive - of course he wants me to buy one.
That's why I figured I'd come here to see if I can get an unbiased opinion.
I am aware that I could, if all else fails, run a cable all the way to the LNB, but this may mean drilling into the wall, which I'd rather avoid if possible.
Thanks for any info,
Anthony

fat-tony

You can't split the cable from the LNB to the receiver in the way you've described - each receiver puts a voltage on the cable and sends signals to the LNB to get it to change the band of frequencies it's using. You need to run a cable from each receiver back to the dish (assuming that, when you got SKY+, the installer put in a quad LNB). Use good quality satellite cable (CT100 or WF100 or WC100) if the runs are anyway long. You may get away with RG6 if the run is short, but it's not the best.

Tony Ramone

Cheers for the quick response.
I was afraid it was gonna be something like that
Well, there are two spare outputs on the LNB, I was just looking for an easier way since I'm not sure the holes that have been drilled in the wall are wide enough to put more cables through, but if it has to be done, then it has to be done.
Does that mean that not even a multiswitch would work? Are they only for quattro LNBs?
Actually, I'm sure I read a comment on a thread here to watch out when connecting more receivers in case you get caught for an extra subscription charge or something...

bk

Tony Ramone wrote: »

Does that mean that not even a multiswitch would work? Are they only for quattro LNBs?
Actually, I'm sure I read a comment on a thread here to watch out when connecting more receivers in case you get caught for an extra subscription charge or something...

multiswitch only work with quattro LNB's, well there are exceptions that work with highend quad lnb's, but you'd still need four cables going to the LNB, so it doesn't help you.

No danger of getting caught for extra subs, you are only decoding the Free To Air channels.

Tony Ramone

Cool, thanks. I'll let ye know how well I get on Depends on the rain I guess...