HDMI Hub/Node

studdlymurphy

Hi All,
Im planning on building a house soon and was thinking of what to do with the telly.
I was first thinking of running double coaxial cables for sky+ from a single location in the attic to all rooms that will have a TV. This would require a sky/+ box in each room.

Then was thinking of running HDMI cables from the location in the attic and having the sky+ boxes in the attic out of the way and use the sky eye to change them.

Anybody have any suggestions or comments on what might be good or bad about what im planning?
Thanks

steveon

You first need to decide what exactly you need to be able to watch and where.

Personally I wouldnt put a sky box in an attic, I would prefer it in the room I want it in and connected to a tv with Hdmi for a better picture and sound.

You should run a minimum of 3 coax cables in your main room, more if you can afford to and I would also suggest running cat5 cables to all the rooms as well as in the future a lot of tv will be streaming over the internet.

If you wish to run HDMI over long distances you would probably need a hdmi convertor to run over cat5...

Stinicker

steveon wrote: »

You first need to decide what exactly you need to be able to watch and where.

Personally I wouldnt put a sky box in an attic, I would prefer it in the room I want it in and connected to a tv with Hdmi for a better picture and sound.

You should run a minimum of 3 coax cables in your main room, more if you can afford to and I would also suggest running cat5 cables to all the rooms as well as in the future a lot of tv will be streaming over the internet.

If you wish to run HDMI over long distances you would probably need a hdmi convertor to run over cat5...

This is good advice from steveon, Ideally if it is a new build house you should run a minimum of 4 Tx-100 coaxials to each room, this would cover you for a Sky+ box in the room (which takes two coax) Saorview (DTT) which will take another coax and (Saorsat) which will take the 4th cable and as this is a planned sat service it is planned to run from a different position so you may need two satellite dishes or some sort of dual-lnb setup.

You would also need to run a few cat5 (or cat7) cables to each room to carry phone (pstn), internet and general network, and either a cat7 or two cat5 cables also to stream HD.

What I have in my house after a rewire last year is three coaxials supplying two astra satellite and one saorview (DTT), I have also a distribution amplifier which feeds the sky output channel into the saorview feed and I can use the magic eye from any room. I have a 2 x Cat5 HDMI balun which feeds the Sky HD signal from the living room to the den and I change channel on the magic eye.

Run loads of cable all over the place and also allow for easy future retro fitting of cable eg. fibre optics, allow channels in the attic floorboards or something as it is not easy to retro fit afterwards, as I am now regretting myself and will have to lift attic floor boards to add in more coax for saorsat if it gets launched!

steveon

You can never have enought cables run. If you can afford the extra expense now is the time to do it...