Setting up FreeToAir in new house pre-wired for UPC

pigtail33

I recently bought a new house that is pre-wired for UPC. There is a UPC box on the wall in the sitting room and master bedroom, both with two connectors coming out of them. There are also two more TV points in the kitchen and second bedroom, but these just have a metal plate covering them. My plan is to just use a free-to-air box, so I'm going to put my own satellite dish and saorview aerial outside.

Just wondering if this is a 'standard' wiring system and would anyone know if I can reuse any of the UPC wires? I've had a look in the attic, but it's so well insulated, it's very hard to see if there is anything I can connect my satellite dish to. Or do I need to bring my own feeds in from the dish and aerial, and connect from there to have multi-room?

I've asked the site foreman, but he's not sure what UPC put into the houses.

thanks for your help

Technofobe

pigtail33 wrote: »

I recently bought a new house that is pre-wired for UPC. There is a UPC box on the wall in the sitting room and master bedroom, both with two connectors coming out of them. There are also two more TV points in the kitchen and second bedroom, but these just have a metal plate covering them. My plan is to just use a free-to-air box, so I'm going to put my own satellite dish and saorview aerial outside.

Just wondering if this is a 'standard' wiring system and would anyone know if I can reuse any of the UPC wires? I've had a look in the attic, but it's so well insulated, it's very hard to see if there is anything I can connect my satellite dish to. Or do I need to bring my own feeds in from the dish and aerial, and connect from there to have multi-room?

I've asked the site foreman, but he's not sure what UPC put into the houses.

thanks for your help

When I installed cable for chorus / NTL many moons ago
a lot of new estates the points in the house were mostly cabled back to the etu ( white telephone book sized box ) at the side of the house usually below the ESB meter box
where you would install a splitter and connect up as many points as the customer was paying for

pigtail33

Thanks Tecnnofobe,

There is one of these white boxes outside my front door. I don't have a key to open it, but I'm sure I can find some way around that. I kinda assumed that was for broadband, so didn't open it.

I'm not at home now, so can't look inside.

Excuse my ignorance, but should there be somewhere I can connect the satellite feed into?

thanks again

lawred2

This would be of interest to me to as our house is pre wired for UPC also.. Would be great to use those pre installed wires for saorview

Technofobe

pigtail33 wrote: »

Thanks Tecnnofobe,

There is one of these white boxes outside my front door. I don't have a key to open it, but I'm sure I can find some way around that. I kinda assumed that was for broadband, so didn't open it.

I'm not at home now, so can't look inside.

Excuse my ignorance, but should there be somewhere I can connect the satellite feed into?

thanks again

Yes if the etu box has the tv and phone cables in it you could run the dish cable to the etu box and connect it there
Also there are splitters available that you can use to combine saorview and sat tv into a single coax cable and then split them again at the back of the tv
You can buy a little tool for opening the box in woodies
failing that a needle nose pliers will do the job as an interm measure but will obviously wreck the little plastic tringular plug if you kept using it

pigtail33

Thanks again Technofobe. Gives me a project to work on over the weekend.

Technofobe

pigtail33 wrote: »

Thanks again Technofobe. Gives me a project to work on over the weekend.

Thanks to The Cush for pointing out this vid this is the combiner i was talking about

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFBPWFUFjFw#t=12

pigtail33

I managed to get the box open and have another question, if I may...

Inside the box, there is one wire coming up from the bottom that is connected to one of those splitters mentioned above, the two wires that come out of this then go back down into the bottom of the box. There are also another two loose wires.

Should I detach the two wires from the splitter/combiner and connect my satellite dish and terrestrial aerial in here this instead? And any idea what the other two lose wires are for, would these be for the other rooms in the house?

Thank you

Rippy

pigtail33 wrote: »

I managed to get the box open and have another question, if I may...

Inside the box, there is one wire coming up from the bottom that is connected to one of those splitters mentioned above, the two wires that come out of this then go back down into the bottom of the box. There are also another two loose wires.

Should I detach the two wires from the splitter/combiner and connect my satellite dish and terrestrial aerial in here this instead? And any idea what the other two lose wires are for, would these be for the other rooms in the house?

Thank you

Yes , the two cables connected to the outputs of the splitter would be to the two preinstalled CATV outlets .
You will need to run 2 cables from sat dish into the box , one from terrestrial aerial into box . You can reuse the splitter for splitting terrestrial signal . Just connect cable from aerial to the input , leaving the outputs intact .
Cut the output cables then use 2 sat/ UHF combiners to splice in 2 feeds from dish ( remember 2 feeds , sat feeds cannot be split) .
Remove covers from CATV outlets and remove the filter /return blocker behind it .
Install 2 more sat/UHF splitters in place of return blocker filters , connect to tv/ box . Job done !
Other 2 cables likely going to other 2 points with blanking plates . Could be connected same way.

pigtail33

Thanks so much for that! I think it all makes sense now.

lawred2

Rippy wrote: »

Yes , the two cables connected to the outputs of the splitter would be to the two preinstalled CATV outlets .
You will need to run 2 cables from sat dish into the box , one from terrestrial aerial into box . You can reuse the splitter for splitting terrestrial signal . Just connect cable from aerial to the input , leaving the outputs intact .
Cut the output cables then use 2 sat/ UHF combiners to splice in 2 feeds from dish ( remember 2 feeds , sat feeds cannot be split) .
Remove covers from CATV outlets and remove the filter /return blocker behind it .
Install 2 more sat/UHF splitters in place of return blocker filters , connect to tv/ box . Job done !
Other 2 cables likely going to other 2 points with blanking plates . Could be connected same way.

I'm looking at using the existing UPC wiring as well but where the white box (splitter) is located is by the front door and at the opposite end of the house to where the UHF aerial will be located.. I'm not running coax around the house and down to the front door...

The preinstalled CATV points are in the main room and the bedroom. The main room will be closest to the Saorview aerial.. The coax from the aerial comes through the wall there.

So I'm thinking about removing the UPC splitter and replacing it with a simple Female to Female coax screw connector i.e. basically joining the two CATV endpoints together..

Where the coax from the aerial comes in I'm planning on using a two way UHF distribution amplifier with one output going to the saorview tv in the living room and the other output serving as an input to the UPC CATV point in the main room..

This I'm hoping will mean that there will be Saorview relayed to the other UPC CATV point in the bedroom..

Does that sound like it would work?

Those endpoints don't have some sort of one way components in them do they? I would have presumed that they were just passive coax endpoints..

Rippy

lawred2 wrote: »

Those endpoints don't have some sort of one way components in them do they? I would have presumed that they were just passive coax endpoints..

The CATV outlets contain a filter that works as a non-return valve preventing RF leaking back into the system . Remove it and use a F joiner in its place .

lawred2

Rippy wrote: »

The CATV outlets contain a filter that works as a non-return valve preventing RF leaking back into the system . Remove it and use a F joiner in its place .

Oh good to know... cheers for that.

So once that's done; I should be all set?