How do I feed satellite to each room and leave room for future saorsat?

batman1

Hi,

My current setup is as follows:

Sky+ in living room fed direct from the dish to the back of the box.

Old analogue 'arrow' aerial which feeds into firstly a small white booster(?) which is plugged into a power socket. It then goes from this white box into a six-way distribution box, which is also plugged into a power socket. Both these boxes are beside each other in the attic. The 6 way box feeds the old terrestrial aerial into the other rooms in the house. The box is this one.. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Signal-Distribution-Amplifier-digital-bypass/dp/B000VEK0I2/ref=pd_cp_ce_2

The signal from the aerial has virually gone so what I would like to do is run a signal from the satellite dish (has a quad LNB) into the other rooms in the house. I have one old sky STB which I can use for now.

There are 4 other rooms in the house (apart from living room.)

Can I do the following:

1. Connect single cable from the dish to the six way box, hence into the rooms and use the old sky box for the free channels?

2. Get rid of the smaller booster box?

The cables running to the rooms are the brown co-ax.

I would like to have the option of connecting up saorsat when it's up and running for a while, but it is not importnant now. I have read that I could change the wall plates and have the sat and aerial coming down one cable from the attic into the rooms. I am guessing I would need a three way switch or something for each room to do this.

Apologies for the long-winded post and any info or help is much appreciated as I know there are lots of experts on thi forum.

I am not the best technically minded but I will persevere and follow any instructions. I put the aerial on the roof myself using a bit of guesswork and it worked ok.

watty

See http://www.saortv.info/satellite-saorsat/distribution/

And other Saorview and Saorsat pages there.

batman1

Apologies, I meant saorview , not saorsat.

So basically I would like to have the option of having a satellite feed to a satellite box in each room and the option of using saorview in each room also.

12 element

Hello Batman,
Some of the things you are proposing are not possible, you can not split a satellite signal like you are the signal from the aerial using the six-way splitter box. You need a device called a multiswitch, which can supply satellite signal to many rooms using the one dish. This will also have an input for the signal from the aerial which can be "split" into two cables in each room one for the satellite receiver and one for the saorview receiver/tv
Can you explain more about your set-up, what kind of aerial did you put up and why has it virtually gone?

JuniorB

FYI - I'm using one of these multi switches - it cost €150 or so.
Have 80cm satelite with a quad LNB feeding 4 cables into multiswitch.
Have a std ariel with one cable into multiswitch.
Multiswitch has 16 outputs- every room has 2 cables from multi switch - one for terrestrial and other for freesat. Some rooms have another extra sat feed for PVR etc.
All works very well and is nice and tidy.... relatively speaking

watty

you can use a €5 to €10 Diplexer to split a Multiswitch cable in the room for TV and Satellite.

Splits TV and Satellite on Multiswitch Cable in a Room
http://satellite.ie/acatalog/Satellite_UHF_combiner.html

batman1

12 element wrote: »

Hello Batman,
Can you explain more about your set-up, what kind of aerial did you put up and why has it virtually gone?

The aerial I put up is a Band -A, 100 element 'arrow type'. The cable from this is fed to a small white (one in-one out) box in the attic. This box is plugged in to the mains. From this box, the cable then feeds into my 6 way splitter box, which is also powered into the mains, and then feeds the rooms. Same as the neighbours. I live in west Inishowen. The aerial points more or less South and when I put it up I could pick up all UK and Irish channels. However, over time I never used it and recently it has almost gone. The neighbours are the same.

My satellite dish has a quad LNB. Two feeds from this go to my sky+ in the living room. From reading on here I now understand that I cannot split the sat signal as I thought. I think I will run 2 lengths of cable from the dish into both the master bedroom and perhaps the kitchen, leaving the original terrestrial co-ax in place in all rooms. I can fit the two cables down the same conduit.

I have an old sky box which will suffice for now for the bedroom.

If I leave the existing aerial and cabling in place, will I be able to have the saorview installed through it or will I need to rip it all out anyway?

watty

Saorview is via aerial.
Unless there is something wrong with the coax there is no need to replace it. While the coding is digital, the aerial signal is just like a UHF analogue signal of about 6,700 channels that are very narrow packed into an 8MHz channel.

The Cush

batman1 wrote: »

The aerial I put up is a Band -A, 100 element 'arrow type'. The cable from this is fed to a small white (one in-one out) box in the attic. This box is plugged in to the mains. From this box, the cable then feeds into my 6 way splitter box, which is also powered into the mains, and then feeds the rooms. Same as the neighbours. I live in west Inishowen. The aerial points more or less South and when I put it up I could pick up all UK and Irish channels. However, over time I never used it and recently it has almost gone. The neighbours are the same.

My satellite dish has a quad LNB. Two feeds from this go to my sky+ in the living room. From reading on here I now understand that I cannot split the sat signal as I thought. I think I will run 2 lengths of cable from the dish into both the master bedroom and perhaps the kitchen, leaving the original terrestrial co-ax in place in all rooms. I can fit the two cables down the same conduit.

I have an old sky box which will suffice for now for the bedroom.

If I leave the existing aerial and cabling in place, will I be able to have the saorview installed through it or will I need to rip it all out anyway?

The small white box on your aerial cable is probably a power supply for a masthead amp located near your aerial. Required because your are in a weak signal area.

If you want Saorview you will require an aerial.

Do/did you ever receive TV3 with your aerial? TV3 thru your aerial would 100% indicated Saorview is available in your area. Do you know the frequency/channel no. of the analogue channels to help identify your transmitter? Holywell Hill (Group A aerial) maybe?

If not Holywell Hill it could be a relay that may never be upgraded for Saorview in which case a new dish and receiver will be required for the planned Saorsat service. (This from Senator Cecilia Keaveney in the Seanad recently)

The aerial fault could be alignment, masthead amp/power supply fault, distribution amp fault or co-ax problem. If you can't troubleshoot the problem yourself it might be worth getting someone in to check the system.

Even though you have a weak analogue signal you may get an OK Saorview signal. The existing brown co-ax cable (if not faulty) should be OK for Saorview but not for satellite.