wiring for satellite & saorview

redgerry

hi

i am currently rewiring my new house and want to have a freesat/saorview setup in 3 roooms (living room plus two bedrooms). i understand that i will need a receiver box in each location.

my electrician has said he would wire 1 coaxial cable from each tv location to a spot in the attic and the satellite installer would connect the rest.

i called a satellite installer to check this was a suitable setup and he said to wire 3 x coaxial cables to the living room tv location and two to each bedroom tv location.

he said these wires should all go directly to the satellite location on the external SE corner of my house with 2m slack outside.

can you confirm if i should follow the satellite installers advice? it seems a lot to have 7 cables coming out of the side of the house to connect to the satellite dish.

apologies if this is covered elsewhere i am not very technical (obviously!).

many thanks for your advice.

Gerry Wicklow

A satellite box needs 2 connections to the dish if you want to view a channel while the box records another. It is possible to "piggyback" the Irish Saorview channels from an ordinary aerial onto one of these cables. If you don't need recording at every location, then a single cable would suffice. In practice it costs very little extra to install 2 cables to future proof the setup. A normal sat dish LNB (the yoke on the dish arm) has 4 connections so you could have 1 room with recording and two others without. It is also possible to get an octo LNB that has 8 outputs. which would support recording in upto 4 rooms. Equally you could have recording on 2 and four rooms without recording.
Some people baulk at the idea of 8 cables plus an aerial going to the dish. In that case you can get a device called a multiswitch that you would locate inside somewhere. This would take the four cables from the dish and the aerial feed and mix them so that you can have as many boxes throughout the house that you need with the bulk of the wiring internal.

As an aside I would recommend adding at least 1 network cable to each location as well.

The Cush

redgerry wrote: »

i am currently rewiring my new house and want to have a freesat/saorview setup in 3 roooms (living room plus two bedrooms). i understand that i will need a receiver box in each location.

my electrician has said he would wire 1 coaxial cable from each tv location to a spot in the attic and the satellite installer would connect the rest.

i called a satellite installer to check this was a suitable setup and he said to wire 3 x coaxial cables to the living room tv location and two to each bedroom tv location.

he said these wires should all go directly to the satellite location on the external SE corner of my house with 2m slack outside.

can you confirm if i should follow the satellite installers advice? it seems a lot to have 7 cables coming out of the side of the house to connect to the satellite dish.

First thing to do is pick a central location in the house to run all the cables to e.g. a point in the attic or hot press or utility room. Ensure you locate a power point there too.

Run 4 co-ax cables from the central location to the sat dish point and a 5th to a location for an aerial. Internally run 2 to each bedroom TV point and as your sat installer recommends at least 3 cables but I always recommend 4 for future proofing. In the main room with the 3 or 4 cables ensure the electrician fits a double deep back-box (approx. 45mm) for flexibility with the cables.

The most important point is to run all your cables now, all bedrooms, kitchen etc., even if you think you might not need them now, better in future to be looking at them than looking for them.

Gerry mentioned network cables, I would recommend at least 2 to each point back to the central location, including the internal telephone point and external telephone connection box (ETU).

All connections can then be done at the central point as required. A multiswitch is a recommended piece of kit to distribute satellite and Saorview feed to each room.

If SkyQ are part of your plans for the future they will require a dedicated 2 cable connection to a new type of LNB on the dish or a dSCR multiswitch, here is a recent discussion - https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057913443

winston_1

Best not to use an electrician for running TV cables. They could well use inferior cables. Electricians know little about the subject.

The Cush

winston_1 wrote: »

Best not to use an electrician for running TV cables. They could well use inferior cables. Electricians know little about the subject.

In this country the electrician will generally do all the first fix, the home owner can recommend what cable to use.

Any of these CT100 or RG6 cables would be recommended - https://www.cai.org.uk/index.php/services/downloads/product-certification-schemes/cable-certification/110-cai-certified-cables/file

The Cush

@redgerry

A suggested wall socket for the 2 cable TV points - http://vision-products.co.uk/product/v33-23plus/

Suggestion for the 3/4 cable main TV point - http://www.discount-electrical.co.uk/section.php/110485/1/new-media-modules/339ae4878307c5581ec940ceeef09caa

redgerry

thanks for the advice from all of you.

Johnboy1951

If running ethernet to all tv points, and coax cables from dish & aerial to a central point then you also have the option to have all tuners in one location (central point) and distribute the TV signals on the ethernet cable.

In this case there is no need for costly set top boxes with tuners and hard disk drives at each TV, but a much cheaper (maybe Android TV box or such) box to just take the data from the centralised tuners and display on screen.
All other functions can also be incorporated, such as recording, time-lapse etc. with a HDD located with the tuners.

It reduces completely the need for coax cables to TVs.

Negative side of this is that it would not be compatible with Sky, and you have one central point of failure.

Besides reducing the need for internal coax distribution, by using a Unicable LNB and suitable receiver you would only need to bring one coax cable from dish and one from aerial into the central location.

It all depends on your needs and preferences.

redgerry

Thanks for all the replies.

I would also appreciate if you could suggest by PM a recommended local installer serving the Blackrock area.

Cheers.

Gerry