Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

Sense-check my satellite plan for a refurb?

Options
  • 24-01-2023 12:47am
    #1
    magformer
    Registered Users Posts: 11 ✭


    Hi everyone

    I'm just finalising first fix electrics on a refurb of my house including TV distribution. I've never lived anywhere with a sat connection so I'm fairly inexperienced with this. Would be v grateful for a sense check of the plan to make sure I'm not missing anything as not convinced the build team know much about this either.

    Plan as follows:

    • Undecided re direct connections to tuners or boxes at each TV or doing central distribution via, say, TVheadend so want flexibility to do both.
    • No interest in Sky - satellite provisioning is for Freesat/UK terrestrial only. I understand it's the same Astra sat. I'll have a Virgin coax connection but similarly not interest in paying a sub for that.
    • I plan to mount a dish on a shed at the end of a south-facing garden as don't really want a dish on the house/not sure it will be good for external insulation in any case.
    • Dish will have quad LNB with four coax runs back into a central distribution location in house (same as patch panel location for CAT6). Run is approx 30-40m max - I think that's OK?
    • Will also run x2 coax from an antenna somewhere for terrestrial to same location.
    • Here's where I am unsure - can I terminate the cables at the distribution location so I have the option to connect to a sat to IP box at that location for TVheadend or connect them to coax that will run to three TV locations around the house? So if it's LNB -> connector -> connector -> internal distribution cable -> wall plate @ TV location, will the signal still be OK or does it need to be a direct run? I'm hoping I could just couple or uncouple the connectors as needed the way I would move CAT6 cables around at a patch panel. Is that going to work?
    • Ultimately I don't want to eliminate the option to run the signal right through to TV locations but I don't want a lot of boxes in rooms and I've read that even high end TVs have a suboptimal tuner experience (e.g. switching sources is a lot of friction) so I'll probably ultimately go with TVheadend and distribute over IP - flexibility is the aim though. Will my satellite "patch panel" plan work?
    • Possibly not the forum for this, but does anyone know if I need multiple DVB-S tuners to watch different channels at the same time for TVheadend clients? I'll have three TVs and if go with Quad LNB to a single sat to IP box I'm hoping that will be more than sufficient but can't quite work this out from online research.

    V grateful for any feedback. Thanks!



Comments

  • Options
    #2
    Gerry Wicklow
    Registered Users Posts: 4,543 ✭✭✭Gerry Wicklow


    Unless you are within range of a UK terrestrial mast (E.G. near the border) and need 2 terrestrial aerials pointing in different directions, I don't see a need for 2 terrestrial coaxes.

    For the satellite end of things I use a multiswitch. These come in all sorts of configs to suit your needs with 5 inputs and however many outputs you like. The 5 inputs are your 4 feeds from a quad LNB and a feed from a terrestrial aerial. The terrestrial signal is "piggybacked" on to the satellite outputs and is therefore available at each location without the need for an extra wire. A splitter built in to the wall plate extracts the terrestrial signal again in each room as required. You would only need two satellite feeds in rooms where you want a recording option. If you are using an Enigma based box in one location, you can access it's recordings over your home network on anything with a web browser. (phone, tablet etc) Likewise you can control the box, access the EPG, set timers and so on from a web browser in your home.

    Others here can advise on SAT>IP if you need more advanced functions.



  • Options
    #3
    dubrov
    Registered Users Posts: 3,559 ✭✭✭dubrov


    As Gerry said, a multiswitch at the distribution centre will allow you to feed multiple locations around the house.

    Terrestrial and Sat signals can share the same cable as well.

    Also look at Unicable as it allows you to send multiple sat feeds down a single cable.

    In terms of tuners, you generally need one tuner for each channel you plan to watch/record at the same time. So if you had three tuners, you could for example watch two different channels and record a third simultaneously. I believe a single tuner could allow viewing more than one channel simultaneously providing they were all on the same transponder/mux but I wouldn't rely on that.



  • Options
    #4
    spaceHopper
    Registered Users Posts: 3,977 ✭✭✭spaceHopper


    We did our house in 2018. My regret is not having HDMI installed. If I was doing it again I'd get the best HDMI I could something that will cope with future standards. Possibly hdmi over optical cable. This is because a pure HDMI matrix is much cheaper and better than and HDMI to ethernet (HDBaseT matrix) and you don't need something at the TV to go from ethernet to HDMI.

    We have x2 coax and x2 cat6a cables at each TV point. I've a terrestrial antenna and two sat boxes. The cables go back to a central point and I've 5 coax from the attic to the at point. The 4 things I'd add are

    HDMI to each TV point.

    Ethernet to each TV point

    A conduit to bring any broadband into the central point.

    A conduit to from enteral point to main TV's

    My kids don't watch TV at all, everything is Youtube or Netflix....

    If you with sat to ip make sure it has more than one decoder.



Advertisement