Cable wiring in new house

nordstrom

Hi,

I have just moved into a new house and would like to get a satellite dish up and running. I've never had satellite before and am really just learning how it all works. I'm hoping someone can answer a few questions for me.

There is a white unlabelled box on the wall of the utility room, I opened it up and there are 14 cables running into it all cut and not plugged into anything. I figured out that there are 2 cables running to each of 6 rooms (4 bedrooms and 2 sitting rooms), and another 2 cables running to a box on the outside.

I would like to get some multiroom satellite going so it's handy to have all those cables in place. But from what I understand I need to have 4 cables coming from a quad LNB on the satellite dish so that I can use a multiswitch to split into several feeds. Currently there are only 2 cables running from the outside. Am I right that I need another 2? Or possibly another 3 if I have a saorview aerial fitted outside too?

Assuming I can get all these cables in place is the multiswitch the way to go to split the signal? Does a multiswitch require power? There isn't an electrical supply of power in the unlabelled white box.

I'm kind of hoping someone can tell me there's a simpler way to do all this with the cables currently in place. All cables are ct100 by the way.

STB.

The answer depends on what you want to have in each room and the ability to record etc. Are there going to be satellite receivers in every room ? 2 cables in are restrictive. You'll need a total 4 and a quattro lnb and a 5 x16 multiswitch if you want 2 sat feeds to each room. You could feed a saorview aerial through the switch as well.

Atlantic Dawn

First thing you need to do is establish where your going to be able to place the satellite dish on the house, this will be the starting point as to where your cabling will need to be routed. Have a look at your house on www.dishpointer.com looking at the 28.2E ASTRA 2A | ASTRA 2C | ASTRA 2D | ASTRA 2F setup, this will tell you where the dish has to be pointed so you will know what wall it can be attached to.

Sky+ and Freesat+ receivers require 2 cables for full functionality to be able to watch and record shows at the same time.

Most dishes come with a quad LNB so could support 4 cables connected, you can also for about an extra €20 or less get an Octo LNB which supports 8 cables connected.

nordstrom

Thanks for the tips. I don't need the ability to record in every room, maybe just one. I'm wondering about just having one receiver and maybe using a raspberry pi to stream over the network to another room. I suppose i'd still need 2 cables to the receiver from the satellite and another from the saorview. As you can tell I haven't thought this completely through...

STB.

What is your main box going to be ? If its a Sky box say now.

What TV hardware will you have in the bedroom ?

Do you want to watch satellite TV in one room whilst watching another channel in another ?

These are the questions you need to ask yourself.

There is one system wiring all your rooms for independent satellite receivers and another for setting up a system whereby you are sending the satellite/or controlling the box from the main room with an internal RF system that you tune into your TV using either a RF analogue modulator or DVB-T modulator for HD. There is also a combination of both.

nordstrom

STB. wrote: »

What is your main box going to be ? If its a Sky box say now.

What TV hardware will you have in the bedroom ?

Do you want to watch satellite TV in one room whilst watching another channel in another ?

These are the questions you need to ask yourself.

There is one system wiring all your rooms for independent satellite receivers and another for setting up a system whereby you are sending the satellite/or controlling the box from the main room with an internal RF system that you tune into your TV using either a RF analogue modulator or DVB-T modulator for HD. There is also a combination of both.

No I'm not getting sky. Freesat and saorview are what I'm thinking, maybe using a Linux receiver so I can tinker and get it streaming to a raspberry pi. I'd like to be able to watch satellite independently in two sitting rooms. Not too bothered about the bedrooms but I suppose a bit of future-proofing wouldn't be a bad idea. I find it strange that the builder went to the trouble of wiring two cables to each room but didn't run more cables to the outside.

The Cush

nordstrom wrote: »

Freesat and saorview are what I'm thinking, maybe using a Linux receiver so I can tinker and get it streaming to a raspberry pi. I'd like to be able to watch satellite independently in two sitting rooms. Not too bothered about the bedrooms but I suppose a bit of future-proofing wouldn't be a bad idea. I find it strange that the builder went to the trouble of wiring two cables to each room but didn't run more cables to the outside.

The builder's electrician will do what the owner asks them to do, otherwise they will simply run the standard 2 cables from the dish. Most wouldn't be up to speed with a multiswitch setup.

You have most of your cabling in place so an extra 2 cables to the dish and a cable for the aerial is all that's required to future proof. A power point will be required where you locate the multiswitch.

Also these wall sockets are a neat solution for 2 cables to each TV point from the multiswitch, they provide 2 sat outputs while splitting the Saorview feed to a separate output - http://www.vision-products.co.uk/catalogue/product/V33-23PLUS

If at some point in the future you decide to go the Sky route (specifically SkyQ) a new tech dSCR multiswitch would be required.

Johnboy1951

As well as the coax cables, do you have ethernet cable running to each room?

This is my preferred model of TV distribution at home.
Stored video and recordings are also centralised and available at each device connected to the LAN, whether wired or wireless.
Home plugs can also be used for distribution of the streams.

I have ripped out most of my coax distribution cables, and hope to get rid of the rest during further renovations.
The main concern would be the LNB to receiver ..... you need sufficient tuners to cover all your use cases.
I would think 4 Sat tuners would be optimum.
Two Terrestrial tuners covering the two muxes would be sufficient presently.

Of course that depends on you having ethernet wiring in place or being prepared to use wireless or home plug for distribution.

If you wanted to go completely Sat>IP then there is a range of special Sat dishes available which have up to 8 tuners built in and its output is fed into the house via an ethernet cable, and made available on the LAN directly.
I would probably go this route (or similar) if I was starting from scratch.

nordstrom

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

As well as the coax cables, do you have ethernet cable running to each room?

This is my preferred model of TV distribution at home.
Stored video and recordings are also centralised and available at each device connected to the LAN, whether wired or wireless.
Home plugs can also be used for distribution of the streams.

I have ripped out most of my coax distribution cables, and hope to get rid of the rest during further renovations.
The main concern would be the LNB to receiver ..... you need sufficient tuners to cover all your use cases.
I would think 4 Sat tuners would be optimum.
Two Terrestrial tuners covering the two muxes would be sufficient presently.

Of course that depends on you having ethernet wiring in place or being prepared to use wireless or home plug for distribution.

If you wanted to go completely Sat>IP then there is a range of special Sat dishes available which have up to 8 tuners built in and its output is fed into the house via an ethernet cable, and made available on the LAN directly.
I would probably go this route (or similar) if I was starting from scratch.

This has me interested now too. Every room has one Ethernet socket, they're all wired as rj11 but I took off the faceplate and the wires are in there for rj45. The problem is I don't know where they all feed back to, or if I'll have the chance to put a router in there. Does that make sense.

I do centralise all my videos and music on an NAS, and then have raspberry pi's to play it on TVs or stereos.

I need to do a bit of research to find out what home plugs are, or muxes. I don't have broadband right now and I have no idea when I'll be able to get it, but I was using a virginmedia horizon box to have a wireless LAN at home. The problem is the house is over 3 floors so the wifi signal is pretty non-existent on the top floor. I suppose I could always use one of the power line kits if the Ethernet thing doesn't work out.

I think I need to contact the electricians to find out how the Ethernet is wired, I'm on an estate that's still being built so they should be around.

Thanks so much for the tips

Johnboy1951

home plugs ....... IP over internal power wiring.
mux ... multiplexer for DVB-T (terrestrial) ... compare to transponders for Sat channels.

There are hundreds of Sat transponders available from Astra Satellites, but only two muxes presently broadcasting from Saorview. So two tuners for DVB-T means that all Saorview channels are available to all connected devices all the time, simultaneously.

There are devices like this one available
http://www.inverto.tv/products/product.php?id=242
as well as Sat Dishes where the whole lot is incorporated and that only requires one Cat6 cable from dish to central router/switch, such as this
http://www.selfsat.com/02_satip/home.html
Research "SAT>IP" to learn about other set ups that might suit you. No doubt cost will come into it and cost/benefit, but I have no information about that in relation to those specific SAT>IP devices and dishes.
http://www.onastra.com/16664016/en

PabloAndRoy

nordstrom wrote: »

This has me interested now too. Every room has one Ethernet socket, they're all wired as rj11 but I took off the faceplate and the wires are in there for rj45. The problem is I don't know where they all feed back to, or if I'll have the chance to put a router in there. Does that make sense.

I do centralise all my videos and music on an NAS, and then have raspberry pi's to play it on TVs or stereos.

I need to do a bit of research to find out what home plugs are, or muxes. I don't have broadband right now and I have no idea when I'll be able to get it, but I was using a virginmedia horizon box to have a wireless LAN at home. The problem is the house is over 3 floors so the wifi signal is pretty non-existent on the top floor. I suppose I could always use one of the power line kits if the Ethernet thing doesn't work out.

I think I need to contact the electricians to find out how the Ethernet is wired, I'm on an estate that's still being built so they should be around.

Thanks so much for the tips

You seem to know what you need and what you are doing. I went the all IP route about 6 months ago and really love it. Look into tvheadend, which I run on a dedicated pi backend running raspbian and a rpi2 on reach TV. This is plenty to deliver 4 HD streams around the house over power line. You have Ethernet, do you are half way there. I bought a quad sat>IP server for 120 euros on Amazon. It works great. If you need transcoding the pi won't cover it on the back end btw.

Johnboy1951

PabloAndRoy wrote: »

I bought a quad sat>IP server for 120 euros on Amazon. It works great. If you need transcoding the pi won't cover it on the back end btw.

Can you provide the make/model number? Thanks.

PabloAndRoy

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Can you provide the make/model number? Thanks.

Is called Telestar Digibit R1. You can configure it over a web interface. Tvheadend finds it automatically and it's all fairly straight forward from there.

Edit: amazon.de is where I got it and it seems to be out of stock at the moment. Sorry: (

If you need more details I can send you a PM of an email I sent to a friend to set it up.

What I really like about tvheadend is that there are clients for loads of platforms, android, iOS Mac OS X (just install Kodi). I use the android client to set up recordings when I'm out and about. Recordings are all handled in the backend and accessible by all clients

Johnboy1951

PabloAndRoy wrote: »

Is called Telestar Digibit R1. You can configure it over a web interface. Tvheadend finds it automatically and it's all fairly straight forward from there.

Edit: amazon.de is where I got it and it seems to be out of stock at the moment. Sorry: (

If you need more details I can send you a PM of an email I sent to a friend to set it up.

What I really like about tvheadend is that there are clients for loads of platforms, android, iOS Mac OS X (just install Kodi). I use the android client to set up recordings when I'm out and about. Recordings are all handled in the backend and accessible by all clients

Thanks ..... found it on line for ~€200
Not bad for a 4 tuner receiver.

Is it possible to add a terrestrial tuner via USB. for Saorview reception?

PabloAndRoy

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Thanks ..... found it on line for ~€200
Not bad for a 4 tuner receiver.

Is it possible to add a terrestrial tuner via USB. for Saorview reception?

That would be very handy but alas no .. afaik the usb is just for drives .. i tried a couple of different WLAN usb sticks .. no joy.

Johnboy1951

PabloAndRoy wrote: »

That would be very handy but alas no .. afaik the usb is just for drives .. i tried a couple of different WLAN usb sticks .. no joy.

Thanks ...... pity ...... it would have made it a complete STB for Ireland.

bk

PabloAndRoy wrote: »

That would be very handy but alas no .. afaik the usb is just for drives .. i tried a couple of different WLAN usb sticks .. no joy.

Could you not add the USB Saorview sticks to the Raspberry Pi running TVheadend? Doesn't TVheadend support DVB-T in addition to Sat>IP?

Am I correct that your setup looks like this.

Telestar Digibit R1 -> Raspberry Pi running TVheadend -> Kodi clients

STB.

Well pablo quite clearly has it inserted at some point as I see RTE 1 and 2 appears in his channel list.

Pablo any chance of a few screenshots of this system and what is required. I have only ever seen it once and that presentation was in German.

If the Digibit R1 was standalone i would understand its appeal. Even so it is restricted to FTA DVB-S unless you can insert a compliant card reader ?

Nonetheless I would love more info on the realities of someone who actually is using the system.

Can you explain a little more about the Digibit R1, is there an O/S on this or is it just a modular tuner unit dependant on third party externally and parallel run dvb software.

Johnboy1951

bk wrote: »

Could you not add the USB Saorview sticks to the Raspberry Pi running TVheadend? Doesn't TVheadend support DVB-T in addition to Sat>IP?

Am I correct that your setup looks like this.

Telestar Digibit R1 -> Raspberry Pi running TVheadend -> Kodi clients

That seems likely but is using an extra device that would be unnecessary if the STB could run tvheadend and a DVB-T tuner plugged in to it, with the client boxes running Kodi with the tvheadend client plugin.

PabloAndRoy

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

That seems likely but is using an extra device that would be unnecessary if the STB could run tvheadend and a DVB-T tuner plugged in to it, with the client boxes running Kodi with the tvheadend client plugin.

The Telestar is just a Sat>IP box. There's no HDMI out or STB type interface. I have a couple of USB DVB-T sticks on a powered hub attached to the pi also which gives me the combined backend. The Telestar shows up in tvheadend as 4 DVB-S tuners and the USB sticks show up as DVB-T tuners. You set these up as separate networks in tvheadend and combine them in you channels where you order them as you like. Tvheadend also supports bouquets, which is handy for Freesat. The clients (Kodi) just see the channels and viola combined Saorview Freesat on each TV.

bk

PabloAndRoy wrote: »

The Telestar is just a Sat>IP box. There's no HDMI out or STB type interface. I have a couple of USB DVB-T sticks on a powered hub attached to the pi also which gives me the combined backend. The Telestar shows up in tvheadend as 4 DVB-S tuners and the USB sticks show up as DVB-T tuners. You set these up as separate networks in tvheadend and combine them in you channels where you order them as you like. Tvheadend also supports bouquets, which is handy for Freesat. The clients (Kodi) just see the channels and viola combined Saorview Freesat on each TV.

Could you not leave the Sat>IP box out and simply add DVB-S USB tuners directly to the Raspberry Pi, along with a DVB-T tuner?

Sorry for all the questions, this is a very interesting set up and I'm interested in doing the same myself.

PabloAndRoy

bk wrote: »

Could you not leave the Sat>IP box out and simply add DVB-S USB tuners directly to the Raspberry Pi, along with a DVB-T tuner?

Sorry for all the questions, this is a very interesting set up and I'm interested in doing the same myself.

You absolutely could do that. I started with that (using 2 x USB DVB-S2 tuners) but found that I was getting some USB bus issues (the pi has some USB bus issues) with that and at the end of the day the Sat>IP set up pushes all the hard work out to the external box. Four decent USB DVB-S2 tuners is more expensive than the 120 quid I spent on the Telestar plus you need a separate power supply for each of those. I appreciate that I got a bargain and that price is not available at the moment, but I would happily have paid 200 for the convenience of it. Its rock solid.

Johnboy1951

bk wrote: »

Could you not leave the Sat>IP box out and simply add DVB-S USB tuners directly to the Raspberry Pi, along with a DVB-T tuner?

Sorry for all the questions, this is a very interesting set up and I'm interested in doing the same myself.

Yes you could, but the R-Pi was not strong enough when I tried, I think because it shared bus between network and USB or some such hardware set up. The R-Pi 3 might have improved on that.

If the Telestar hardware could be available with the opportunity to use your own OS, then it would be greatly attractive, as one could put Openelec on it, with Tvheadend managing the tuners, and even adding USB DVB-T sticks to extend the tuners.

PabloAndRoy

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Yes you could, but the R-Pi was not strong enough when I tried, I think because it shared bus between network and USB or sime such hardware set up. The R-Pi 3 might have improved on that.

If the Telestar hardware could be available with the opportunity to use your own OS, then it would be greatly attractive, as one could put Openelec on it, with Tvheadend managing the tuners, and even adding USB DVB-T sticks to extend the tuners.

In theory you could do this with the Telestar. In practice there is no linux distribution that I am aware of for the box.

The running os (which i assume is some linux variant) does not even expose telnet or ssh. So I can't even log in that way and drop in the firmware for the DVB-T devices. Even if I could do that, would the embedded Sat>IP server use them and expose them as DVB-T tuners?

It would be very handy to be able to do this as it would put everything in one box, but I can'r see how it could be done.

The telestar does support DLNA, so you could connect to it in that way, but no way of attaching DVB-T devices.

Johnboy1951

PabloAndRoy wrote: »

In theory you could do this with the Telestar. In practice there is no linux distribution that I am aware of for the box.

I have long wished for similar hardware that comes with a default OS, but that would allow booting with an OS of choice.
Such a device would be much cheaper than having to buy parts and build our own HTPC backends.
The Selfsat dishes might yet become the preferred scheme, where the Sat>IP magic is done on the dish and there is a need only for one ethernet connection from it into the home - no mess of cables etc.
8 tuner Sat2IP dish (+2 cable LNB outputs) for around €500
http://satvision.de/tests/selfsat-ip36-im-test-2647
http://www.selfsat.com/02_satip/home.html

PabloAndRoy

PabloAndRoy wrote: »

In theory you could do this with the Telestar. In practice there is no linux distribution that I am aware of for the box.

I stand corrected ...

https://github.com/perexg/satip-axe/tree/master/dist

This has telnet and also ssh .. and it runs minisatip server which supports dvb-t. So it should be possible to get all the tuners running in one box...

the notes say "there is 128M SPI flash memory in the device" so you wont get tvheadend running in there..

I wont be trying this

STB.

Ah python.

Ask them what Realtek device it might accept. You will then have to compile a dvb-t usb driver (and kernels etc) for it or get someone, the likes of someone like VU's dvb genius "angerlofsky" to explain it to you.

If you can telnet to it, and you have a dvb-t stick connected to it what happens when you type lsusb ?

PabloAndRoy

STB. wrote: »

Ah python.

Ask them what Realtek device it might accept. You will then have to compile a dvb-t usb driver (and kernels etc) for it or get someone, the likes of someone like VU's dvb genius "angerlofsky" to explain it to you.

If you can telnet to it, and you have a dvb-t stick connected to it what happens when you type lsusb ?

at a danger of being 100 miles off topic .. if I get a chance at the weekend I might boot one of these firmwares up and have a poke around ... have a fair bit of linux behind me, so kernel/module/driver compiling would be fine. I would be surprised if its just a case of dropping in the firmware. lsusb & dmesg will tell us.
Have compiled kernel for an unsupported DVB-S card before with good results.

but to be honest I have a solid working system as is and spending 10 hours getting this to accept a DVB-T stick just for the "fun" (and for effectively zero benefit) is 10 hours I could (and should) be spending with my family

How far off topic are we exactly ?

slegs

Just to throw in an option here that I am looking at in a new build

- get all satellite feeds and saorview to a central location
- get your house wired for CAT6
- distribute HDMI picture via a splitter box and cat 6 convertors (can carry remote signal also)


This will allow you to have box one (say Sky) on HDMI 1 and box 2 (saorview or Freesat or linux combo) on HDMI 2.

This way you have TV options in glorious HD in all rooms with no messy cabling or boxes in rooms. You could have wall mounted TVs with no cables showing at all.

Dont do RF modulation the picture is rubbish on any modern TV.

See below for kit involved

HDMI Distribution Splitter
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00I8KDWTK

CAT6 HDMI Extenders
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00YNHIVF2

Johnboy1951

slegs wrote: »

Just to throw in an option here that I am looking at in a new build

- get all satellite feeds and saorview to a central location
- get your house wired for CAT6
- distribute HDMI picture via a splitter box and cat 6 convertors (can carry remote signal also)

1. yes
2. Cat5e will do the job fine ... but there is little difference
3. why distribute HDMI signals as opposed to IPTV? HDMI is more costly and less flexible.

PabloAndRoy

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

1. yes
2. Cat5e will do the job fine ... but there is little difference
3. why distribute HDMI signals as opposed to IPTV? HDMI is more costly and less flexible.

I would largely agree with johnboy. I take it the idea is that you then access the sky box in any room. That's fair enough. If you have a new build why not got with Ethernet by 2 to each room. That way you could have your HDMI over Ethernet for sky and then run an IPTV network over the other wire from a Linux box with PCI tuners for FTA. That would be a lot more flexible. It's no more expensive to run two lines to each room.

I take it the remote signal mentioned is over HDMI CEC. I have CEC enabled Tvs and it's a bit hit and miss. I find that often some of the keys are assigned to TV functions and don't get passed along the HDMI where I want it to go. An example is on a Sony Bravia I have, I press a number key and the TV thinks I want to switch to its native DVB-T tuner and switches source to DTV. Goddamn it! There is no way on that TV to disable those key functions. In my opinion HDMI CEC is great in theory, not so flexible in practice.

STB.

slegs wrote: »

Dont do RF modulation the picture is rubbish on any modern TV.

I agree that the old analogue modulators are terrible. I know publicans who are paying for the Sky HD commercial licence using those €15 Revez RF modulators and still believe its HD over analogue.

Have you seen the DVB-T modulators that have dropped to the €200ish mark ?



Receiving end has to have a DVB-T MPEG4 H264 Tuner.

slegs

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

1. yes
2. Cat5e will do the job fine ... but there is little difference
3. why distribute HDMI signals as opposed to IPTV? HDMI is more costly and less flexible.

You still need an ip receiver like Kodi or similar at the other end to play the streams and recordings. This is a fiddly solution in my view when you could just be using the actual interface of the satellite or combo receiver.

slegs

STB. wrote: »

I agree that the old analogue modulators are terrible. I know publicans who are paying for the Sky HD commercial licence using those €15 Revez RF modulators and still believe its HD over analogue.

Have you seen the DVB-T modulators that have dropped to the €200ish mark ?



Receiving end has to have a DVB-T MPEG4 H264 Tuner.

Wasnt aware of these. Look a really good option that I may consider also.

Johnboy1951

slegs wrote: »

You still need an ip receiver like Kodi or similar at the other end to play the streams and recordings. This is a fiddly solution in my view when you could just be using the actual interface of the satellite or combo receiver.

We all have our preferences ...... but having all TV channels available on all devices such as Phones, tablets, laptops, PCs as well as at TVs far outweighs any negative aspects I have come across.
The flexibility is key, IMO.

PabloAndRoy

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

We all have our preferences ...... but having all TV channels available on all devices such as Phones, tablets, laptops, PCs as well as at TVs far outweighs any negative aspects I have come across.
The flexibility is key, IMO.

Agree .. plus with a bit of port forwarding and a DDNS (5 minutes work), I can watch my home TV system and watch my recordings anywhere there is Wifi or a decent 4G signal exactly as it is at home .. great for the foreign holidays, business trips or visiting relatives with Sky

slegs

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

We all have our preferences ...... but having all TV channels available on all devices such as Phones, tablets, laptops, PCs as well as at TVs far outweighs any negative aspects I have come across.
The flexibility is key, IMO.

You can do all this anyway with a centralised setup but for watching TV I find its hard to beat the primary set top box interface over hdmi. I have Kodi for all this also

Johnboy1951

PabloAndRoy wrote: »

Agree .. plus with a bit of port forwarding and a DDNS (5 minutes work), I can watch my home TV system and watch my recordings anywhere there is Wifi or a decent 4G signal exactly as it is at home .. great for the foreign holidays, business trips or visiting relatives with Sky

Coincidently I did some testing of this set up earlier this week.
Unfortunately I do not have the connection speed (upload) to make it work properly, and was only able to get radio functioning without problems ... but the full TV listing was available to a friend in Sweden.
Only other thing I would need to do would be to make access more secure with password or such.

Johnboy1951

slegs wrote: »

You can do all this anyway with a centralised setup but for watching TV I find its hard to beat the primary set top box interface over hdmi. I have Kodi for all this also

That implies two systems, with one duplicating the other ....... distributing TV.
Do 'smart' TVs have the ability to use the IP streams without a client device? I don't have such a TV so have no knowledge of it.

slegs

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

That implies two systems, with one duplicating the other ....... distributing TV.
Do 'smart' TVs have the ability to use the IP streams without a client device? I don't have such a TV so have no knowledge of it.

On some smart TVs you could do this but it wont be user friendly...

IP streams are great...just not for primary TV viewing...fine for ipads and laptops...just my opinion

PabloAndRoy

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Coincidently I did some testing of this set up earlier this week.
Unfortunately I do not have the connection speed (upload) to make it work properly, and was only able to get radio functioning without problems ... but the full TV listing was available to a friend in Sweden.
Only other thing I would need to do would be to make access more secure with password or such.

I "only" have 5mbps uplink, but that is enough for SD. On tvheadend I set all my users to have access to 192.160.0.0/16 (only accessible from the home networks). Then I set up some other users with strong passwords accessible from 0.0.0.0/0 (anywhere). I set those users so that they get the SDTV tag, so only get to view those SD channels. It works perfectly with very little overhead setting it up. I set up another user who gets the Radio tag which has the lovely side effect of getting good quality radio on the car over 4G or even 3G using tvhclient and VLC. My antenna in my car is busted and I don't really like TuneIn or those types of apps.

PabloAndRoy

slegs wrote: »

On some smart TVs you could do this but it wont be user friendly...

IP streams are great...just not for primary TV viewing...fine for ipads and laptops...just my opinion

Would you care to explain what you mean? I have all IP TV system at home and can simultaneously run 4 perfectly solid 1080 streams which look fantastic on all of my HD TVs.

Johnboy1951

PabloAndRoy wrote: »

I "only" have 5mbps uplink, but that is enough for SD. On tvheadend I set all my users to have access to 192.160.0.0/16 (only accessible from the home networks). Then I set up some other users with strong passwords accessible from 0.0.0.0/0 (anywhere). I set those users so that they get the SDTV tag, so only get to view those SD channels. It works perfectly with very little overhead setting it up. I set up another user who gets the Radio tag which has the lovely side effect of getting good quality radio on the car over 4G or even 3G using tvhclient and VLC. My antenna in my car is busted and I don't really like TuneIn or those types of apps.

Your up speed equals my down
I await "the promised land" of NBP fibre

slegs

PabloAndRoy wrote: »

Would you care to explain what you mean? I have all IP TV system at home and can simultaneously run 4 perfectly solid 1080 streams which look fantastic on all of my HD TVs.

I'm sure picture is great. From my fairly extensive experience in this space the boxes that receive streams are not as family friendly as more standard tv setups and involve a lot of fiddling and maintenance.

I have 2 dedicated Gigabyte mini PCs Kodi boxes and multiple enigma boxes including Vu Plus Ultimo. I have also setup tvheadend and other Linux based tv servers over the years and found them to be too much hassle for core tv viewing

Johnboy1951

as more standard tv setups

OK, I just gotta ask ....... what is the standard tv setup, and what other standards are close to that?

slegs

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

OK, I just gotta ask ....... what is the standard tv setup, and what other standards are close to that?

Look will leave ye boys at it.

It's all great, enjoy

Johnboy1951

slegs wrote:

I'm sure picture is great. From my fairly extensive experience in this space the boxes that receive streams are not as family friendly as more standard tv setups and involve a lot of fiddling and maintenance.

Originally Posted by Johnboy1951 
OK, I just gotta ask ....... what is the standard tv setup, and what other standards are close to that?

slegs wrote: »

Look will leave ye boys at it.

It's all great, enjoy

Thanks for providing information requested :rolleyes:

slegs

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Thanks for providing information requested :rolleyes:

Yawn. I don't have time to play your games. It's perfectly obvious what I meant. Move along now.

Johnboy1951

slegs wrote: »

Yawn. I don't have time to play your games. It's perfectly obvious what I meant. Move along now.

Hehehehehe ....... yeah ...... time to post twice without info and not time to provide some info.

OK, I get it.

PabloAndRoy

slegs wrote: »

I'm sure picture is great. From my fairly extensive experience in this space the boxes that receive streams are not as family friendly as more standard tv setups and involve a lot of fiddling and maintenance.

I have 2 dedicated Gigabyte mini PCs Kodi boxes and multiple enigma boxes including Vu Plus Ultimo. I have also setup tvheadend and other Linux based tv servers over the years and found them to be too much hassle for core tv viewing

I know you won't answer (and that's fine... in fact, please don't ) but I would just say that I don't find that myself.

I need to pass TWAT* with my set up and in 6 months I have no real issues. Skin selection is crucial. I use mimic, which is clean and very customisable so I remove all the stuff that wont be needed and leave a simple menu. One button on the remote brings up the EPG, one brings up the channel list and one for subtitles on/off. That's all she wants and she much prefers it to our previous cable system (especially as it saves the household 40 quid a month). I have a few shortcuts myself for other stuff, but I keep them out of the way. Also a few 5am cron jobs to sync the skin settings on all the clients so any minor changes I make on one TV gets replicated on all the TVs so they all look exactly the same. I suppose I am bit of a geek and I like automating all the little tasks as much as possible.

I do a little backend housekeeping once every few weeks, no big deal, most of that is taken care of with the Freesat bouquet and its not as if Saorview changes very often. I have not fiddled with a client box since Christmas. I turn off auto-updates on the client addons.

Everyone has their own preferences. You have yours and I have mine ... the world will keep spinning if we don't change our minds.


*The Wife Acceptance Test - the toughest test for introducing new technology to a household.

nordstrom

Thanks for all the posts, was very informative. I'm about to pull the trigger on getting a dish installed. I called a couple of installers, one guy said all I needed for multi room was two cables from the dish, the other guy talked about an octo lnb to supply all my rooms and now I'm back to being confused again.

Basically what I want is a dish and a saorview aerial which will supply 2 rooms initially with the potential for a 3rd and 4th room if that need ever arose. As far as the dish is concerned it would be great if it could pick up multiple satellites but if that's going to get very complicated I can ditch that requirement and just have Astra 2.

There's 2 cables going to every room from my utility room. If I want satellite and saorview to a particular room I think I can combine 2 satellite plus one terrestrial into 2 cables and split them out again at the tv point. Am I right in this? I guess the alternative is to use one cable for satellite and one for terrestrial but then I'd be limiting myself to receivers without recording ability?

The guy who talked about the octo lnb said I wouldn't need a multiswitch in the utility room if I had 8 cables coming in, he said this is the cheaper way to go. Is there any disadvantage to this over running 4 cables from a quad lnb and one from a saorview aerial into a multiswitch and using the outputs from the multiswitch to feed the rooms?

The 2 rooms that I'm initially feeding, one will have a receiver that's simple for my wife to use, just saorview and FTA, and ability to record. Any recommendations on the receiver?

The other room will be my playground, I'd like to mess with a Linux receiver, I assume this can give me saorview and FTA for starters? If I was messing around trying to pick up another satellite would that mess up my wife in the other room? Basically I want to be able to pick up whatever free sports channels are out there.

Sorry for the long post. I'm just about to order an installation and don't want to make a mess of it. I appreciate all info about sat>ip but I just think this might be complicated for my wife.