Coaxial wiring in new house & SKY magic eye

zzyxxx

Hi,

I've bought all the gear to get set up with the magic eye in a bedroom of my new house.
The SKY box is downstairs in the living room. Behind it is a plate with 2 coaxial jacks in it.
Upstairs in the bedroom behind the tv is a similar plate which also has 2 coaxial jacks in it.

Is there a standard way these would be wired? Would the upstairs and downstairs ones be connected or what is the purpose in having two jacks?
Is there any easy way to find out what they are connected to?
I tried setting up the magic eye assuming they were connected, alternating which jack I had each cable plugged in to but I couldn't pick up anything, so I assume no jack in either of the plates are connected Up/Down stairs? Any way to verify this?

The sky cable does not interfere with either of these plates - sky cables come in through the wall directly into the back of the sky box.

Thanks for any help!

The Cush

zzyxxx wrote: »

Is there a standard way these would be wired? Would the upstairs and downstairs ones be connected or what is the purpose in having two jacks?
Is there any easy way to find out what they are connected to?
I tried setting up the magic eye assuming they were connected, alternating which jack I had each cable plugged in to but I couldn't pick up anything, so I assume no jack in either of the plates are connected Up/Down stairs? Any way to verify this?

Likely that each TV point is cabled back to a central location, attic/press/etc., and just left there not connected to anything, up to the homeowner to decide what to use the cabling for.

Two connectors on the faceplate could be used for single or twin satellite feeds from the dish or a combination of satellite and Saorview aerial feeds. An aerial signal can be combined with a satellite signal down one cable if required. These signals can be combined with a basic combiner or for multiple rooms via a multiswitch.

First thing to do is to find the ends of the cables, then find one cable from each room and join them, them add your magic eyes.

BTW: what Sky box do you have? The new SkyQ box doesn't have the option to use magic eyes. The previous boxes required an I/O Link add-on for the magic eyes to work.

zzyxxx

The Cush wrote: »

Likely that each TV point is cabled back to a central location, attic/press/etc., and just left there not connected to anything, up to the homeowner to decide what to use the cabling for.

Two connectors on the faceplate could be used for single or twin satellite feeds from the dish or a combination of satellite and Saorview aerial feeds. An aerial signal can be combined with a satellite signal down one cable if required. These signals can be combined with a basic combiner or for multiple rooms via a multiswitch.

First thing to do is to find the ends of the cables, then find one cable from each room and join them, them add your magic eyes.

BTW: what Sky box do you have? The new SkyQ box doesn't have the option to use magic eyes. The previous boxes required an I/O Link add-on for the magic eyes to work.

Thanks for that, I've connected the two cables and managed to identify the correct jack points.

I have the Sky+HD box so I needed the IO Link too.
Just to confirm the magic eye & IO Link are working I connected them to the coax jack on the downstairs TV (same one as has the Sky box, connected via hdmi) and scanned the channels and it found the Sky channel.
I also changed the channel using the magic eye in the corner behind the tv to ensure it wasn't just changing it via the Sky box and that was all good.

Then brought the magic eye upstairs and connected it to one of the jack points and the red led remained unlit. When I changed to the other point the LED lit so that tells me there is a signal coming from the io link.
I've been scanning for the last 3 hours and can't manage to find the correct channel.
Could it be that the distance of wire is too much? I suppose it is going all the way from downstairs, to the attic where I connected it to the other half which then goes from the attic back down to the bedroom. There is a fair bit of slack wrapped around joists up there too - would it be worth cutting out some of that? At a guess there could be an extra 7-8m or so just wrapped around?

Thanks!

Thurston?

It's an analogue channel you're looking for. Make sure that's what the TV is scanning for.

zzyxxx

Still no luck with this.
I've also tried changing the channels in the Sky box and still didn't work.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Thurston?

As mentioned already, are you sure the TV is scanning for analogue channels?

What's the make & model of the TV?

zzyxxx

Thurston? wrote: »

As mentioned already, are you sure the TV is scanning for analogue channels?

What's the make & model of the TV?

Yep, I set the scanning to Analogue. It also gave me the option to select "Cable" or "Air" aerial, I've tried both and it found nothing. Light is still lit up red on the magic eye connector behind the tv.

TV is a Samsung UE24H4003.

Thurston?

So it worked connected to the downstairs TV, the DC power is getting upstairs (this is usually where people have problems), & there's nothing but a length of cable (with a joint) between upstairs & downstairs?

Must be something funny going on if the TV won't find it.

zzyxxx

Thurston? wrote: »

So it worked connected to the downstairs TV, the DC power is getting upstairs (this is usually where people have problems), & there's nothing but a length of cable (with a joint) between upstairs & downstairs?

Must be something funny going on if the TV won't find it.

I tested it again downstairs, and it worked, then brought the same tv from downstairs to upstairs and used the same process as worked downstairs to scan for channels and it found nothing.

Maybe the length of wire wrapped around the joists/rafters is too much? Would it be worth taking a few M off that or is there anything else I can try?

Thanks

Thurston?

Do the sockets in the wallplates have labels?

zzyxxx

Thurston? wrote: »

Do the sockets in the wallplates have labels?

No don't think so, I just checked them by seeing if the LED light on the mouse thing was on then I decided I had the correct socket.

webpal

My sky+ box is ancient and the rf out/magic eye works perfect for me all over the house. Sky did offer me an upgrade to a newer sky+ box years ago and I asked about this and they said you can use io link but it may not work over a certain distance.

Could you bring the satellite feed into the attic, put the box in the attic and use eyes in the other rooms?

Thurston?

webpal wrote: »

My sky+ box is ancient and the rf out/magic eye works perfect for me all over the house. Sky did offer me an upgrade to a newer sky+ box years ago and I asked about this and they said you can use io link but it may not work over a certain distance.

They were probably referring more to its ability to power the 'eyes', than its RF performance.

I suppose OP here has nothing to lose by trying a shortened cable. I'm certainly struggling to come up with a suggestion based on info. provided.

webpal

Thurston? wrote: »

They were probably referring more to its ability to power the 'eyes', than its RF performance.

Agreed, but is that not the issue? Or is it a case that no picture is being received at all in bedroom (ignoring the magic eye for now)

Thurston?

webpal wrote: »

Agreed, but is that not the issue? Or is it a case that no picture is being received at all in bedroom

Appears the latter is the issue: as I said earlier in the thread, a reversal of the usual problem.

webpal

Ok, so maybe bring the tv from the bedroom to the sitting room, get the station tuned and bring it back to bedroom (or test in the attic is possible). At least you know then the picture should work.

Edit: Actually looks like that's been done

Thurston?

Yeah, I was just wondering if there was any length of cable that would kill the RF signal but let through enough DC to power the LED on the eye ...