Looking for suggestions on a new Sat & DDT setup

Charlie-Bravo

Hi guys and gals,

I have an opportunity to set up a new system in my home while some work is happening. I do want to future proof in a way.

I'll be installing a sat dish with four coax cables to it (dish facing south East - cables are already in). I'll have DTT to my West so have to mount an antenna on that side of the house with one coax to it. All cables are sent back to a central point in the eaves attic area where there is also a power socket.

In each room that has a TV is a twin cable feed except for the Living Room that has two twin cable feeds.

I've been using Freesat (2008 Panny TV) and FTA Sat/DTT on an Arivia 120 combo in the last few years. Looking to get Freesat LG TV in the near future so it's just course connections

What should I do next? Should I get a special box for the attic to distribute the signals? I only have 4coax connections to the sat dish, but potentially could have more that 4 TVs in the future (or more than 2 recording boxes needing two sat coax cables).

I'm not up to speed on headend stuff and appreciate proposals/suggestions. Thanks!

winston_1

Octo LNB on the dish.

Johnboy1951

Run Cat5e or Cat6 cable to each room from a central point also.
In the future you might wish to use this for internet or even to distribute TV from a central server.

In fact I recommend two Cat5e cables to each outlet point and back to the central location ...... the cable is cheap and is easy run during build but could be a nightmare to run later.

Gerry Wicklow

You can get a Multiswitch in various sizes that take the 4 cables from the dish and the single from your terrestrial aerial and combines them in such a way that you only need 2 coaxs at any TV point to allow watching and recording sat and terrestrial at that point. The terrestrial signal is 'piggybacked' onto one of the satellite feeds and can be split out as needed in each room. This is just one example that can run 16 satellite tuners and terrestrials.

Charlie-Bravo

I've routed Cat6 to each TV point but only with one cable. I can put on a mini switch for doing Data if I've more than one device to hardwire.

I get how a multi switch will work and is certainly what I what considering hence the 4sat+1DTT. Is there any benefit in an IPTV system which does not have to be managed?

Gerry Wicklow

One advantage of the cat6 cables is the ability to stream your own content between boxes or a NAS. In my experience, wireless networking is less reliable for such things.

Charlie-Bravo

I think I'll look into the multi switch setup.

As a side question, is there any benefit in putting in a Ka band LNB on a big dish that can be combined and fed through a multi-switch?

Just thinking if I could reuse the 2008 Panny TV without a DTT STB and get Saorsat on the 'Other Channels' through the sat connection. The TV doesn't do Saorview due to the x16 MPeg4 flag (unfortunately the TV is DVB-T1 standard as is well covered in this forum years ago!).

Gerry Wicklow

I'm using a 16+1 input switch currently setup with 28E, 19E, 13E and 9E(Saorsat). The main thing about Saorsat is that it is purely RTÉ and TG4. No TV3 suite as they are too mean to pay for it.

Charlie-Bravo

Thanks Gerry. There's no diseqc on the TV so won't chase that route. As suggested, multi-switch makes most sense and will gear up for it.

I'll probably get back in touch with Tony on bits and bobs...

Yamanoto

Unless you plan to solely use your mobile to change channels, switching between Freesat & DTT on an LG TV is a frustratingly convoluted process.

Gerry Wicklow

astrofluff wrote: »

Thanks Gerry. There's no diseqc on the TV so won't chase that route. As suggested, multi-switch makes most sense and will gear up for it.

I'll probably get back in touch with Tony on bits and bobs...

Even without DISEQC the TV would default to the first outlet so you could still use it for 28E.

Charlie-Bravo

Was speaking with a Sat and DTT installer and he said to put in a Quattro LNB instead of a regular quad on the dish when using a multi-switch. If there any good basis for putting in this as I do want the luxury of hooking straight up to the LNB without going through the switch off I don't want to!

Gerry Wicklow

AFAIK most switches these days handle either a quad or quattro equally well

The Cush

Mostly Quattro but quad/quattro versions are available, be sure when purchasing that it's quad compatible

Thurston?

astrofluff wrote: »

Was speaking with a Sat and DTT installer and he said to put in a Quattro LNB instead of a regular quad on the dish when using a multi-switch. If there any good basis for putting in this as I do want the luxury of hooking straight up to the LNB without going through the switch off I don't want to!

Probably just the installer's preferred make doesn't come in quad-compatible form. (All that involves is the switch permanently keeping each LNB output on the required band/polarity setting, i.e. 13/18 volts, with/without 22 KHz tone.)

Not sure why you'd want to retain the ability to connect directly to the LNB, & you couldn't do that with a quad either, without the receivers connected to the switch losing some channels, so you'd need to fit an octo to get the extra outputs.

iioklo

Don't use the type of multiswitch shown above, it's not future proofed you need one that can output wideband as well as legacy signals to be SkyQ compatible, even if you dont go for skyQ , other receiver box's are starting to have many tuners built in for recording many chanels at a time. I'd also run more than one cat5e/6 cable to each location (smart tv, sky box, streamer box's etc).

winston_1

astrofluff wrote: »

Was speaking with a Sat and DTT installer and he said to put in a Quattro LNB instead of a regular quad on the dish when using a multi-switch. If there any good basis for putting in this as I do want the luxury of hooking straight up to the LNB without going through the switch off I don't want to!

Basically he is right. But there are no quatros to fit sky type dishes.You also need to upgrade your dish to a standard type.

Charlie-Bravo

Cheers guys - I don't have the dish installed yet - hoping to go with a solid Triax 60cm or 80cm. So far I have pre-cabled to the dish location with 4 sat cables going to it. I am thinking that I may not install the multi-switch just yet and connect straight to the receivers hence the quad LNB. Once there is a few quid to splash out on the multi-switch and splitters, I'll set everything up the right way then.

Capt'n Midnight

Yamanoto wrote: »

Unless you plan to solely use your mobile to change channels, switching between Freesat & DTT on an LG TV is a frustratingly convoluted process.

You can pickup an Amazon Fire for half nothing when they go on sale, failing that scrounge an old unuused android phone

bk

astrofluff wrote: »

I've routed Cat6 to each TV point but only with one cable. I can put on a mini switch for doing Data if I've more than one device to hardwire.

One cable is good, but two are better.

The reason being is that you can use the second cable for other purposes, for instance HDMI over cat5/6. This is a different protocol from regular ethernet data and the two can't be shared on a single cable.

eirman

I use one of these mudulators to distribute SKY in HD throughout a large house.
http://www.freetv.ie/hdmi-modulator/
Don't forget to use "BOARDS" for a checkout discount

Any Soarview TV (Or Freeview HD) will tune in the HD Signal.
Any decent coax will do.

I use "Powermid" devices to send the I.R. back to the Skybox and several other pieces of kit.