Will this work?

[PaulSC]

Afternoon all,

I'm trying not to ask a question that's already been asked a thousand times, so I've done some searching on the forum and just want to check I'm barking up the right tree!

Just come back from a customer who wants Sky in just about every room in the house. So, my plan is to run a feed (PF100) from the RF2 out of the Sky box in the lounge to the Uplink socket on a Labgear HDU681/S in the loft:

http://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/MXHDU681.html

(36.50 from TLC - 81.73 from Screwfix !!)

From there, PF100 drops to the various rooms. As most of my work is domestic electrical and I don't see much satellite work, I have a couple of questions.

1. Will this work?

2. In each room would you normally terminate into a standard TV aerial socket and not a satellite F socket?

3. Is it worth taking a standard aerial feed into the distribution unit as well?

4. Does the signal come out of the Distribution unit as a modulated RF signal, and if so how are the various tv's tuned into this signal? Does it appear as an extra channel?

He's bought a couple of digi-eyes which I assume 'ping' a signal back to the main Sky box to change channels. Have told him every TV will see the same Sky channel which is OK.

Sorry for the length of this but this is new to me (I dont even have Sky at home) and I dont want to screw it up headbang

Thanks in advance.

Paul

 

[Andy™]

[quote name=PaulSC;169562

1. Will this work?yes

2. In each room would you normally terminate into a standard TV aerial socket and not a satellite F socket?doesnt make much difference' date=' but i usually use F connectors for everything[/color']

3. Is it worth taking a standard aerial feed into the distribution unit as well?yes, otherwise you would be stuck with sky only. at least with the aerial, all normal & freeview channels etc will work

4. Does the signal come out of the Distribution unit as a modulated RF signal, and if so how are the various tv's tuned into this signal? Does it appear as an extra channel? it appears as a channel. 60 IIRC, but you can change it. usually set to channel 6 on the TV

my red

 

[PaulSC]

Thanks Andy,

'Scuse my ignorance, but what's 60 IIRC?

 

[Andy™]

iirc, sky boxes are factory set to RF channel 60

 

[NozSpark]

I think that the SKY box RF2 output also sends out terrestial signals IIRC.

For the Magic eye's to work you will have to enable them in a hidden menu on the SKY box

 

[Andy™]

I think that the SKY box RF2 output also sends out terrestial signals IIRC.For the Magic eye's to work you will have to enable them in a hidden menu on the SKY box

doesnt the sky box only do that if it has an aerial input to start with?

the the magic eye may well need to be turned on (at least the 9v supply anyway). its in a hidden menu, press services 401 select to get it

 

[NozSpark]

[quote name='Andy

 

[PaulSC]

Thanks guys,

As I mentioned before, this is not an area of expertise for me.

The aerial will feed in seperately to the Labgear loft box. I understand each TV will have to be tuned to see the Sky box signal, and those that have magic eyes will be able to change sky channels on the central Sky box but how will they 'see' the standard aerial feed?

Will this be broadcast on different channels to the sky box? Is a special outlet plate required?

Sorry if this sounds a bit basic but I'm sure there are many sparks on the forum who will find this very helpful.

Paul

 

[Andy™]

the existing aerial feeds into sky box. the sky box then loops it through to the output, and adds an extra signal to it (sky). this then goes to TV, where it can be tuned to either normal channels or sky channel

 

[Lurch]

The existing aerial feed is fed to the TV's either from the aerial input on the tuner or via the Sky box. Either way the downleads to the other TV's will have on them all the channels from the aerial plus an analogue channel carrying the Sky signal. All the TV's are tuned in in the normal way and they should just pick up the Sky channel on the analogue, or you can manually tune it. Worth sticking the Sky channel on something noticeable as Sky for testing purposes, like 999 info channel or something.

Bear in mind though that a lot of TV's don;t have analogue tuners nowadays, and once analogue is turned off a lot more TV's will be dropping the analogue tuners.

Also that amp is probably a bit overspecced for what you need. If the Sky box already has an aerial feed to it then all you need is any standard 8 way amplifier with IR\DC passthrough with the RF2 of the Sky box just connected to the UHF in. e.g. http://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/MXSLX8G.html would do.

 

[PaulSC]

Thanks Lurch,

Are you saying this proposed setup will be no good once the terestial analogue signals are switched off?

 

[Lurch]

No, it will work as a standalone system, I'm just saying check to make sure the TV's actually have analogue tuners and also advise the customer that any new TV's may not be able to receive the Sky signal on the RF system as many don;t have analogue tuners.

Once the analogue transmitters are turned off the internal distribution of the Sky on analogue frequencies will work, just that you may find it increasingly difficult to get anything with an analogue tuner in it!

 

[PaulSC]

Thanks again Lurch,

Is there a digital solution to the labgear loft box or am I barking up the wrong tree?. Customer seems to be on a buying spree for new flat screen TV's (3 so far) so I dont want to specify something that may not work on the new gear.

 

[Lurch]

Is there a digital solution to the labgear loft box or am I barking up the wrong tree?.

Well you're barking up the right tree, just that there's nothing in it! You can get digital modulators, but expect to pay upwards of

 

[Robojin]

As Lurch has said things will get complicated in the event you have no way on new TV's to tune into channel 68 (Sky default) in the future.

However I'm not sure there is any cost saving for manufactures to remove the analogue side of the TV because DTV is still broadcast over an analogue carrier, the main difference is how the signal is constructed e.g. each channel is encoded using Mpeg 2 compression allowing for more content for the same given analogue frequency band

There is a way to use Cat5 baluns as a distribution method, but it can get costly and is not really suited for the beginner. However as I recall I've seen some balun types recently that can use coax instead of Cat5 for HD.