Cabling up the home

[Londonman]

Just bought an old black and white cottage to do up for possible resell. I'd like to make it as future-proof as possible while I'm running in electric cables etc and so was wondering what other cables I should run about the place?

Cat-5e network cable springs to mind but what else?

Many thanks

[Lufer]

We did our house a couple of years ago during a major refurb and ran Cat5, Sky, RF, Telephone around as many places as possible. I imagine there are far better qualified than me read this forum but again I would suggest working out possible uses for respective rooms before just running cables. Keep the cat5 away from the power tho!

[Paul_Maddocks]

CAt5e is good as it can be used for both data and voice (via modtaps). RF is a good idea for sky / tv arial signal distribution.

I would suggest flooding as much as you can, giving a at least 2 Rf and 2 CAT5 in 2 different locations per room - so the future owners feel it can be flexible.

Make sure it all comes back to a logical single location and that you don't need a 20 page doc to make changes once the house has been sold on - e.g. use well labelled patch panels as much as possible.

[Liam @ Prog AV]

Pick a place for patch panelling e.g. attic or basement or dodgy understair cupboard.

- run 4 coax from Sky Dish to patch panel
- run 1 coax from aerial
- lounge and if you are greedy master bed, wants 4 coax from patch panel
- optionally pick an additional sky box location e.g. kitchen, 2nd lounge etc, and run 2 or 3 coaxes.
- run 2 CAT5 to each room

Coax:

4 coax = 2 Sky, 1 Aerial, 1 Feedback

- this is for Sky+(HD). You patch through the aerial and 2 dish links to come down 3 coaxes. The fourth goes from RF2 out on the Sky box back up to the attic, and is then connected onto your distribution box which then feeds all the other rooms. Each room is able to view Sky on say channel 7, and with a magic eye can also change channel

3 coax = 2 Sky, 1 Aerial or feedback (or 1 Sky, 1 aerial, 1 feedback)

- having a second box say in the kitchen/bedroom/games room. This room could have Sky+ and feedback also to the attic. Using a Sky plus Combiner, you take this feedback and the feedback from the main Sky HD box and put them both onto the distribution system. Now each TV in the house has channel 7 SkyHD, channel 8 Sky+.
- or, Sky+ and aerial down for a dedicated seperate system that does not feed the rest of the house

2 coax = sky and aerial
- means you can have a standalone sky box and an aerial signal (or ditch the aerial signal and use it for feedback instead)

1 coax = sky OR aerial
- since all the patch panels are in the same location, you can potentially turn any socket into the house into a sky tv feed instead.

You can also keep your CCTV centre with the patch panels, and can load CCTV onto say channel 8 for all TVs in the house.

It is also possible to combine sky dish and aerial signals to go down a single wire. Might as well just wire it all up rather than rely on buying the embedder, but it's a possiblity if rewiring is costly.

CAT5 can be used to send composite and s-video quite easily (with remote). So with the patch panel all in similar locations at any point in the future you could for example take an s-video out of the sky box, feed it up the CAT5 in the living room, and then patch this to the cat5 in the kitchen (or multiple rooms) and send it all back down again.

Later this year, we hope to see cost effective component over cat5...

[yannic]

with this feedback cable your talking about, what kind of device do you use to link that back in to your Coax Distribution system which you talk of? I just had a poke on Maplin and wasn't sure what to look for.

I'm guessing it's a device with a number of Coax outputs and 2 inputs (1 from the feedback and 1 from the regular arial?)

What is the exact type of device I am lookin for?

[MAW]

When you use UK sky, the STB has an aerial input, and RF output x 2. RF2 out is powered, and offers control of the box from a remote location via the coax. So you run the aerial cable to the box, it mixes in a sky RF signal, channel selectable in the engineers menu, and you send that back to a suitable loft amp/distributor. The signal is fairly pants, you wouldn't want to be relying on it on a 42" plasma, but it gets you sky and control around the house. We run the coax round even when going for a high quality cat5 distribution system, as the control is so cheap and effective.
Just done an install where the builders had run the cat5, we had 4 cats to each video location, out of a potential 32 cores in 4 wires, we had 14 left spread over 4 cats. Be careful with cat5, don't kink it, bend it sharply, or put your goddam nails though it or your install team will nail your tender parts to the floor.

[Liam @ Prog AV]

The device you are looking for that goes in the attic is a tvlink compatible aerial distribution amplifier, and a sky+ combiner. Combiner takes the two feedbacks and combines them (exactly as it says on the tin!), the distribution amplifier then takes this bit, and, well it distributes it!!! There's not really anything else to it apart from having the knack when it comes to getting the combiner to work (honestly, for something that should just plug in and work they never bloody do). If you're still unsure get a professional in, there really are a million and one things a pro will just know to avoid.

Use the coax system for small TVs dotted about the house, use CAT5 to send better quality signals to the larger LCD and plasma screens. Funnilly enough, I would also tend to use a magic eye over coax to control sky even if sending the signal via CAT5! Very reliable system direct into the back of the box rather than relying on blasters.

[hornydragon]

for the sake of future proofing from the main distribution point (often loft or under stairs run 2 x Coax and 2 x CaT5e TO EVERY EQUIPMENT LOCATION. Main room perhaps run 4 coax run 5 coax from roof antenna dish locatrion to distri box, 1 for DVB-T, DAB, FM and 4 for SAT may want to run 8 sat if large property but adding extra from Dish to loft isnt hard may be if you go unstairs or basement, i would also run Cat5 for phone/data to sepearate location in bedrooms and studies also kitchen (if possible i would run one to behind fridge too) Also remeber sky boxes need phoneline conenction so run an extar cat5E for SKy box phone line to every box location (this does mean you will have 5 cat5e to some locations but they can be damaged as can Coax so build some redunatcy into the system, if you were considering multiroom sound or control solutions you should also run cat5e and speaker cable to wall splates at sitch level and ceiling locations and from ceiling location to wall switch in each room this is bundels and bundles of cable 90% of which may never be used but will future proof as much as is possible at this time.