Connecting rooms with existing wiring

[student]

Hi,

I have a question I hope somebody can answer.

My house has build in connection for main terrestrial antenna in every room. I have never installed the antenna as I use Sky. I am thinking about putting satellite dish at the other side of the house and was wondering if I could use the existing cable to send the signal to other rooms in the house?

I.e. would I be able to connect bedroom with my living room?
Many thanks for any replies

I was not sure what forum to post this question on, I am sorry if this is the wrong place.

 

[Topper]

Unfortunately your post is not very clear, what are you trying to connect to what???

Are you wanting to have different sky channels in each room or the same in each room???

 

[rolfw]

I presume from your post that you want to connect a satellite dish to one of your downleads? If the cable is double screened, then it will accept a satellite signal, if not, you will suffer signal loss, the longer the run, the more unacceptable the loss.

 

[student]

My house has in built cabling for a main terrestrial aerial. Currently there is no aerial in place. Could I use the cabling instead to connect a Satellite dish to a receiver in the downstairs living room. i.e. one cable from bedroom to attic and then attic to living room - as the dish will be located by that bedroom ?

I am just trying to install a satellite dish from one side of the house to the receiver on the other side without having to put in new cables.

 

[student]

How can I tell if the cabling is double screened ?

 

[rolfw]

Trim a little outer sheathing off and see if it has copper or aluminium foil and copper braid.

 

[student]

Thanks for that. Can I ask if it is double shielded, would I be able to send a tv signal from a receiver to different tvs in different rooms or just the signal to one receiver ?

 

[rolfw]

You can send the output from a satellite receiver via normal coax, it is only the higher IF frequencies (the signal between dish and receiver) which require the better cable.

 

[spiney]

Existing coax cable for terrestrial tv is almost certainly UHF only type, which won't carry a satellite signal more than a few feet (unfortunately)!

There's 3 things to look for:

1) If the dielectric - "filling" between centre and outer conductors - is solid, and the outer conductor is also "braid" only, with no additional "foil" (which looks like aluminiun cooking foil, although may be copper!) outside it, then it's UHF only.

2) If there's an air spaced dielectric - ie the insulation between the inner and outer conductor clearly has holes going through it, then the cable is probably satellite type, in which case there should also be a solid outer foil (as above).

3) If the cable type is printed on the outer insulation, you can probably look up the specs (on various websites)!

A proper test would also tell you, of course.

(oops, just to be quite clear, as Rolf say above, it's the dish connection to a satellite receiver that this affects, the actual tv output from a sat receiver to tv aerial socket will "happily" travel along a UHF only cable!).

 

[haggard]

Stud,
The wiring system you have is probably:
Antenna connected via cable to a distribution amplifier which has typically 6 outputs and cables going to different rooms. (Except you say antenna not installed.)
You can distribute Sky to all rooms as follows:
From Sky dish, run sat cable to sat box.
From terrestrial antenna (if needed) run cable to UHF input of Sky box.
Connect one of the Skybox UHF outputs to TV to loop the antenna to TV.
Connect the other Skybox UHF output to the cable coming from the distribution amplifier (wall socket?). Connect the other end of this cable, formerly stuck into the distribution output, into the distribution amp input instead.
Now the Sky and terrestrial antenna signals are fed to all rooms.
You can set the UHF channel of the Sky box to a clean region using the menu.
If, however, you were planning to using the cable system to feed the sky dish LNB output to all rooms, you hit many problems:
The distribution amp cuts off at about 850MHz which is below the frequencies of the LNB IF. So nothing gets distributed.
With multiple connections to the dish, you would have priority problems anyway (who controls the 22kHz and H/V switching?)
You could put a quad LNB on the dish and feed independent outputs to four rooms but you would need to lay four sat cables all over the place.
Then you either need four Sky boxes or move the one box from room to room.
If you have but one Sky box, then the top method is best and you have to compromise with having UHF (composite video) and mono sound except where the Sky box is connected to the nearby TV with a scart.

 

[spiney]

UHF type coax cable, just to add .......

You can extend the "satellite dish range" of UHF only cable by using an (or several) in-line amplifier(s), this should work despite degrading the sat signal at each amp, but really not worth doing, much better just to get the correct cable!

Wickes - and other - DIY stores sell RGU6 sat cable, which is for "indoor interconnect" (not waterproof!), not really for outdoor use, but you can use this if on a budget, as actual performance degredation over time is slow, and must be very bad to stop reception.
Or just get the correct stuff, from sat suppliers, eg: www.cpc.co.uk (and see nobby's links section!)..

PS, for distributing Sky digibox RF out (tv aerial frequencies) around house, see www.tvlink.co.uk , especially the various pictures there. Maplin shops sell (own brand) tv links, and SLX "link compatible" amplifiers, although at higher price than most websites (this - as Rolf says - should work on the existing wiring!).