Sky in apartment

LLMMML

I recently bought an apartment and was thinking of trying to get the management company to install a shared dish that would allow me to get a sky plus subscription. I rang sky and was initially told that a minimum number of people in the complex would need to ask for it for them to set it up. When I rang back for more info a different guy told me that they don't do this anymore and would have to get one of their "partners" to set it up.

Anyway there are about 40 apartments in one building from the early 1990s. It's wired for eircom and UPC. My main question is: would installing a communal dish require a huge job of wiring every single apartment (too much hassle) or would it be a case of somehow connecting the dish to the UPC cabling?

Mountjoy Mugger

Each apartment doesn't have to be pre-wired. When Sky was installed in my apartment complex, a dish was hung on the side of the building; from the dish fibre was run under the eaves of the building and drops were made to various switch boxes on the exterior walls, strategically placed at various points to connect up to 4-6 separate apartments.

If someone wanted to connect to Sky, a run was made from the box nearest the apartment and a small hole was drilled to run the feed directly to the apartment. No UPC cable was interfered with. I had both services running simultaneously for a short period. Ask your Management Company to start making enquiries.

LLMMML

Mountjoy Mugger wrote: »

Each apartment doesn't have to be pre-wired. When Sky was installed in my apartment complex, a dish was hung on the side of the building; from the dish fibre was run under the eaves of the building and drops were made to various switch boxes on the exterior walls, strategically placed at various points to connect up to 4-6 separate apartments.

If someone wanted to connect to Sky, a run was made from the box nearest the apartment and a small hole was drilled to run the feed directly to the apartment. No UPC cable was interfered with. I had both services running simultaneously for a short period. Ask your Management Company to start making enquiries.

Who can do these kinds of installs? I want to have all the info before I go to the management company. Sky said premier digital or muskerry satellite but there's pretty much zero info about these guys online.

Play To Kill

As above fibre is the best option, only one 3mm fibre cable needed per apartment to give up to 4 satellite connections. The company in the link below used to do this for sky, not sure if they still do though.
http://www.kbo.ie/index.php/apartments-tv/

Mountjoy Mugger

LLMMML wrote: »

Who can do these kinds of installs? I want to have all the info before I go to the management company. Sky said premier digital or muskerry satellite but there's pretty much zero info about these guys online.

As you can see from the post above, there's more than one company in the trade who do these installs.

Our Management Company shopped around until they got a favourable deal and choices. - e.g. people could connect to Sky or alternatively to Hotbird on install. No disconnection from dish if contract with Sky terminated, etc. One of the elected officers of the M.C. volunteered for the task in fairness.

The installers we used (Finlay Communications) are no longer trading, so shop around.

Thoie

Play To Kill wrote: »

As above fibre is the best option, only one 3mm fibre cable needed per apartment to give up to 4 satellite connections. The company in the link below used to do this for sky, not sure if they still do though.
http://www.kbo.ie/index.php/apartments-tv/

That crowd did our apartment block, and I haven't heard any complaints. Installation was neat (both inside and out). They'd initially put an unnecessarily large box right outside my window (in my line of sight), and moved it as soon as I mentioned it.

I had to call them once after installation, and they turned up promptly and when they said they would.

helimachoptor

KBO are the company that sky use, however sky are no longer paying KBO to fit out apartment buildings.

If there's enough apartments they may do it on the hope that the commission from the customers makes it worth their while

hawkwind23

you would think with the amount of apartments SKY would have a definitive solution.
as a live in the north i was able to get a FreeView recorder and its worked out a much better option in the end.
Sky is pretty much useless without the option to record