NLC - Sky / Freeview signal around house

[PhilA]

Hey
I reckon theres a fair few gadgets loving peeps here who could point me in the right direction.
Current TV set up in my house is 1 outdoor aerial thats useless but connected to livingroom and 2 bedrooms.
The livingroom TV is the only one I can watch tv on and it uses an indoor aerial thats touching the curtain to get a signal only good enuff for BBC channels on freeview........ and i want this changed b4 the F1 season starts

What i want is for signals to be in each of: livingroom / 1 bedroom / kitchen / eventually other bedroom. Each room will eventually have an HD quality TV and I want to be able to use the HD signal in each.
I would like the aerial to be fed to each room. I may get SKY or FreeSat and also have this in each room also as the reception for TV is rubbish here.
Want to be able to record programmes.
Not sure if need to have each room able to watch its own channel independantly - but each must be able to control the channel selection.
Rather not have Wireless around the house, so will implement it with wiring - easy as its a bungalow!

Im trying to research on tinternet about how to do this... but anyone got any experience they could share on this?

Cheers
Phil

[Lazydonkey]

If you are looking to burn some cash Sky have a multiroom set up for £10 extra a month per room, but that wil give you 2/3/4 boxes with HD quality and full control..............nae cheap though...........mind you i can get good introduce a friend offers just now

I've got a good preview PVR and a good signal but the quality of the picture is nowhere near as good as the SD signal on my skybox - let alone the HD one.

Not sure if that helps or not?

[PhilA]

interesting about the picture quality... thats good to know.. and makes me move towards sky!
i didnt know u could drive up to 4 boxes off of the 1 sky dish...with HD quality... i thought it was only 2 HD boxes per dish, or something like that.
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm almost makes me rule out normal tv totally!

[neil]

I've got both Satellite (pikey version) and Freeview tuners in my TV and cant tell the difference in picture quality apart for the HD satellite content. Getting a new aerial installed professionally made a massive difference - I used to have the same portable aerial setup as you. Run it to a decent booster and send multiple feeds out from there. As of today freeview HD boxes are now available - http://www.freeview.co.uk/freeview/Serv ... eeview-HD2. Of course if you want more than BBC, ITV, and 4 HD channels then you'll have to go for a nice "cheap" Sky package

[Lazydonkey]

interesting about the picture quality... thats good to know.. and makes me move towards sky!
i didnt know u could drive up to 4 boxes off of the 1 sky dish...with HD quality... i thought it was only 2 HD boxes per dish, or something like that.
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm almost makes me rule out normal tv totally!

You can drive 8 feeds off the latest LMBs so that's 4 Sky + / SKy +HD boxes

Dont get me wrong, although i work for them I'm not a dyed in the wool convert - i still think they are farking expensive (although i get mine free ).

Neil's comment about aerials is probably a good one though - my comparison is based on a Sony Upscaling PVR via our flat's shared feed vs our Sky HD box box via our shared dish.

The BIG difference though comes with TV's IMHO. One of our "biggest is best" SE'ers haw a 50" LCD in which the picutre is nowhere near as good as the 40" LCD i bought from the same manufacturer for the same money. So even spunking all the money you want on a great source won't matter a jot if your TV is guff.

PM me if you want a good deal on HD - i've got three to give away and there are only two left

[alicrozier]

Phil,
A bit of a halfway solution (but where I am without 2nd or 3rd HD boxes and additional subscriptions)...

Main TV uses HD box HDMI feed while the rest of the house uses RF feed from the HD box (obviously not HD quality) and 'magic eyes'. Limited to the same channel throughout the house but not a problem for us.

Incidentally our FreeSat picture quality seems better than Sky SD.

Cheers,
Ali

[Jamie84]

Have decent knowledge of this stuff as I have done this type of work in my own and others houses . My set up is as follows , Found this to be the most cost effective.

I have one sky hd box and one sky plus using multiroom ie one extra room . I have everything going back to a central location , a cupboard upstarirs . Wiring wise I have Hdmi cables to my main screen and to each of the 5 additional screens around the house , I also ran 2 co-axil (cbt100) cables to each screen in the house and some cat5s , and some component/audio here and there . I have the hdmi feed which comes from my amp (or sky box if no amp in place) going into an hdmi splitter similar to this http://ukhdmi.com/Cablesson-1x4-HDMI-Splitter_QQ100993 therefore giving me the same hdmi source to 5 screens . I then took a cbt 100 from rf out on the sky plus box to a ditribution amp http://www.toolstation.com/shop/Electri ... 084/p31318 , therefore boosting the sky plus signal around the house also , giving me hd or normal sky at each screen , which suits us as there is only 2 of us at home .

To change channels you can use magic eyes on the ends of those cbt100 cables which will change channels at box. or i have this badboy http://www.trustedreviews.com/multimedi ... Control/p1 this will control everything out of site .. sky boxes , lights , blinds , amps you name it as long as its either RF , IR or even bluetooth . Very useful if you have few bits of equipment .

You could get multiroom but its alot of clutter and cost , if the hdmi signal has to be independant you would need an hdmi matrix , cost put me off but these can display any source on any screen at anytime http://ukhdmi.com/Octava-HDMX48CAT-UK-4 ... h_QQ101793 , this is the cat 5 version , but standard hdmi wasnt much cheaper at the time of my install.

You can also feed an aerial into the distribution amp which will allow freeview at all screens .

If you are prepared to do the wiring it works well

hope this helps.

[alicrozier]

That looks cool Jamie. Is there a limit on how far you can run HDMI cable? (I'd need ~35m)

[Jamie84]

That looks cool Jamie. Is there a limit on how far you can run HDMI cable? (I'd need ~35m)

You shouldnt really be running hdmi over 10m , what you need to use in that case is CAt5/6 Cable with hdmi Baluns. Baluns were around £50 a pair last time I checked ,the baluns go at each end of the run and are terminated into a cat 5 patch , again can be expensive . I was considering this option in my house but I was short of time and not really too sure how they worked.

[BiggestNizzy]

Anyone used a stacker/destacker ?

[Lazydonkey]

Have decent knowledge of this stuff as I have done this type of work in my own and others houses . My set up is as follows , Found this to be the most cost effective.

I have one sky hd box and one sky plus using multiroom ie one extra room . I have everything going back to a central location , a cupboard upstarirs . Wiring wise I have Hdmi cables to my main screen and to each of the 5 additional screens around the house , I also ran 2 co-axil (cbt100) cables to each screen in the house and some cat5s , and some component/audio here and there . I have the hdmi feed which comes from my amp (or sky box if no amp in place) going into an hdmi splitter similar to this http://ukhdmi.com/Cablesson-1x4-HDMI-Splitter_QQ100993 therefore giving me the same hdmi source to 5 screens . I then took a cbt 100 from rf out on the sky plus box to a ditribution amp http://www.toolstation.com/shop/Electri ... 084/p31318 , therefore boosting the sky plus signal around the house also , giving me hd or normal sky at each screen , which suits us as there is only 2 of us at home .

To change channels you can use magic eyes on the ends of those cbt100 cables which will change channels at box. or i have this badboy http://www.trustedreviews.com/multimedi ... Control/p1 this will control everything out of site .. sky boxes , lights , blinds , amps you name it as long as its either RF , IR or even bluetooth . Very useful if you have few bits of equipment .

You could get multiroom but its alot of clutter and cost , if the hdmi signal has to be independant you would need an hdmi matrix , cost put me off but these can display any source on any screen at anytime http://ukhdmi.com/Octava-HDMX48CAT-UK-4 ... h_QQ101793 , this is the cat 5 version , but standard hdmi wasnt much cheaper at the time of my install.

You can also feed an aerial into the distribution amp which will allow freeview at all screens .

If you are prepared to do the wiring it works well

hope this helps.

This is much more useful than my advice

BTW ive also got a logitech remote, only mine is a Harmony one - its cool though

[Stevoraith]

my main screen and to each of the 5 additional screens around the house ........there is only 2 of us at home .

We only have one telly in the house- am I wierd or is Jamie's '6 tv's for 2 people' excessive!?

[CSK_423]

my main screen and to each of the 5 additional screens around the house ........there is only 2 of us at home .

We only have one telly in the house- am I wierd or is Jamie's '6 tv's for 2 people' excessive!?

I have something similar 5 TV's for 2 people in a very similar format to Jamie's aswell !