Sky non-standard installation

aido_b

Hi all,

I am a returning customer to Sky and I rang them yesterday saying I wanted to join again. I had cancelled my subscription last Novemeber as I was moving house and doing renovations. During the renovations I had the house wired for Sky in the living room (3 ports in the wall), bedroom (1 port) and office (1 port), with all cables going to the attic.

When I rang Sky I told them I wanted to rejoin but that I would like a non-standard installation (wired from satellite to the attic and routed back down to living room). Also I have only kept my old sky box (not Sky+) and don't have a satellite dish.

I was informed that their engineers only do standard installations and that they are not insured to enter anyone's attic. The salesman said I would have to find another company who can set it all up and do all the necessary cabling and then it would just be a matter of calling them to activate my account again.

So now I'm more confused. Does anybody know of any companies in the Dublin area who will come out and install a satellite dish, wire it to the attic and connect to my existing cables?

Thanks all. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Tony

I know www.simplytv.ie are independent sky installers and they cover the Dublin area.

Gerry Wicklow

Isn't it nice to see a company that can afford to turn away business :eek:

Kristopherus

Did you not get begging letters from $ky offering you half price for 12 months. If you have, jump for it & tell $sky you will need a dish. Let the installer do the work needed when he arrives. $ky will eke plenty cash from you to more than cover their expeneses in a couple of years.

Tony

All that will happen then is a sky installer will turn up and be unable to complete the install in the manner that the OP wants, ie the attic.

Kristopherus wrote: »

jump for it & tell $sky you will need a dish. Let the installer do the work needed when he arrives.

Soarer

Both my Sky installs (one 14 months ago, the other 2 weeks ago) were wired into the attic and connected to existing cabling. Nothing was ever mentioned about a non-standard install.

Tis a lot handier for the lads doing the install to run 10 foot of cable into the attic than trying to run it around to the front of the house or whatever.

drBill

Soarer wrote: »

Both my Sky installs (one 14 months ago, the other 2 weeks ago) were wired into the attic and connected to existing cabling. Nothing was ever mentioned about a non-standard install.

Tis a lot handier for the lads doing the install to run 10 foot of cable into the attic than trying to run it around to the front of the house or whatever.

Although from looking at hundreds of houses around the country, they clearly much prefer the opportunity to sling cables across roofs, through window frames, slightly off-vertical/off-horizontally along walls and to knock out a bit of extra plaster around the edge of the hole.

I remember trying a few years ago to convince a sky installer to hook up a dish to the cables in the attic and to leave the decoder in the attic. But he was adamant that it was better to tack 40+ feet of cable around my facia and through my front wall than to run a 10 foot link from the dish to the cables in the attic. And after hearing him try to convince me that the fibre glass dust in attics was actually one of the main causes of the decoders failing, I politely showed him the door.

Tony

drBill wrote: »

And after hearing him try to convince me that the fibre glass dust in attics was actually one of the main causes of the decoders failing, I politely showed him the door.

Well hes actually right on that point, an attic is the worst place to put a satellite receiver and also means a loss of picture quality as you would have to use RF instead of scart/RGB

drBill

Tony wrote: »

Well hes actually right on that point, an attic is the worst place to put a satellite receiver and also means a loss of picture quality as you would have to use RF instead of scart/RGB

Really? Find that very surprising - btw I didn't mean placing the decoder sitting on the insulation, there is a hard surface for it. I've had decoders, file servers, routers, burglar alarms, etc running in various attics for years now and never had any problem with dust. In fact if anything, much more dust and fluff accumulates around the kit around/under the living room telly due to the general level of activity there.

Bilbert55

the attic was fine before HD boxes became available, it was v handy for a distribution system around the house..... but people now want the quality now Flat screens are the norm!

sky installer will always do the handy job!!

if it is easier to run into attic and use existing cable - they will
if it is easier to install dish 15ft up wall then run cable around house... they will

and they will convince you either way!! if you argue, they're gone!!

I cant complain!! i get loads of work from customers - after they have left

Cantona's Collars

Bilbert55 wrote: »

the attic was fine before HD boxes became available,

Would you leave your computer running in an attic? HD boxes have hard drives and delicate circuitry,the dust particles from insulation and the extremes of temperature would wreck it,there's too much to go wrong with boxes now to justify leaving them in that environment.

Even so you'd see ordinary coax being used from the RF out on the box to the tv so the customer wouldn't even be getting HD.I've seen these lazy installs.

All well & good putting a HD box in the attic then getting the worst possible picture on the nice flat screen hanging on the wall.

However,some installers will connect cables in the attic if you show them where they are,don't expect them to try and work around piles of junk & boxes.I prefer having a straight run from the dish to the box,the less connections the better.

pelisor2000

http://www.digisats.ie/