[tik33]

Hi all,

I've got an engineer coming round tomorrow and would really appreciate some thoughts from you learned people on what I should be asking. Don't want him to fob me off with any old rubbish...

What I'm after is a multi-room freesat system. This is in a new build and I currently don't have a tv aerial or a sat. dish or a TV! - so it's all starting from scratch as it were.

Couple of questions:

1. should I be going for any particular sat dish or are they all much of a muchness?
2. Can the dish receive radio signals? I'm getting really bad reception from my indoor radio aerial and wondering whether I can hook it up through the co-ax to the dish - if necessary could I add a co-ax splitter (to split between TV & radio as they're both in the same place located next to the co-ax plate).
3. Is it better to go for a tv with freesat built in or get a separate box
4. finally if I had a dish, could I also get freeview through the dish - or is it a completely different signal?

(location London if it makes a difference)

Thanks!

Gus

[Geofbob]

First, Freesat can only be received via a satellite dish; Freeview via a terrestrial aerial. Their respective channel line-ups overlap, but there are major differences - each has a website, where the full channel lists can be consulted.

What is not at all clear from your post is why you seem to have opted for satellite reception at all - unless you want Sky, which you don't mention. One of the main reasons for the inception of Freesat was for the minority of UK households which will not be able to receive Freeview due to their location - but that does not apply in London. In particular, if you want "multiroom" then satellite is more tricky, as a satellite signal cannot be split as easily as a terrestrial signal. Also, generally speaking, satellite hardware (boxes, recorders etc) are dearer than their Freeview equivalents - though when Freeview HD comes on stream (relatively soon in London) the hardware for that may be more expensive.

On your specific query re radio reception, both Freeview & Freesat include numerous radio channels, you can listen to via the TV. But for a dedicated FM or DABS radio signal, think a separate aerial may be needed.

PS Re the dish - if you decide on one - a mini (43cm) should be sufficient in London. Re TV with/without Freesat, there are good reasons for not bothering if it's going to cost much more, & using a separate Freesat box.

[MartinPickering]

1. The number of rooms makes a big difference to any recommendations. We'd need to know how many (minimum) satellite feeds you want.

2. A satellite TV dish LNB does NOT receive radio signals. It does, however, pass many satellite radio programmes to the satellite TV receiver.

It IS possible to feed UHF, VHF and LNB signals down a single cable.

3. Better in what way? It's a personal choice. Do you want to record programmes? A TV generally will not be able to record.

4. Freeview requires a terrestrial aerial and Freeview receiver (or TV).

See Installing Sky Digital TV eBook

[tik33]

Originally Posted by Geofbob

What is not at all clear from your post is why you seem to have opted for satellite reception at all - unless you want Sky, which you don't mention.

thanks for both your replies:

to Geofbob - I'm not really interested in Sky - the reason is that my house has a flat roof with a parapet and basically a TV aerial would stick up and look darn ugly whereas I'm told that a sat dish can sit on the roof behind the parapet so that it can't be seen from the street. The house is a new house and I've gone to a lot of trouble to avoid cables etc. from sticking out here there and everywhere - and the builder put the co-ax which was going to to serve the tv aerial in the wrong place (i.e. it was going to be in a discreet corner but now can't).

I suppose the other choice would be to get a tv aerial that can sit flat beneath the parapet - do these exist and are they any good?

I'd heard about freeview HD but didn't realise it was coming to London as soon as next year - but that would suggest that it's not worth buying a new tv now (as most come with normal freeview which from the sounds of it may become obsolete?)!

I hear what you say about low quality from the sat dish - could this be enhanced by a booster of some sort?


to Martin:
1. thinking about tv in minimum 3 rooms but could be as many as 5 in the future.
2. interesting - so I could put a radio aerial (noting above) on the roof and send it down the same co-ax? would I then split it at the wall plate?
3. I generally believe in separates - that way things can be upgraded one at a time if necessary - but just really checking that the same logic applies to sat. TV
4. thanks - noted.

Won't we all be watching tv by broadband soon anyway - and therefore I won't need an aerial at all???!

Thanks again

[MartinPickering]

1. OK so assuming you want to be able to watch AND record in every room, that's 5 x 2 = 10 cables. An OCTO LNB (8 outputs) would not provide this.

2. A SAT/UHF diplexer would be required at each end of the cable. However, bearing in mind the above, you might be better off using a MULTISWITCH with 5 inputs and 12 outputs. Four inputs come from a QUATTRO LNB and a TV aerial to the 5th. Up to 12 cables can be run to your rooms. The aerial signal will be present on each and can be extracted via a diplexer (decombiner) wall plate.

Since a multiswitch loses some signal, it's usually recommended that you use the next size larger dish. In your case a 60cm dish with a 40mm clamp for the OCTO LNB can be mounted on the roof, facing south south east.

3. I prefer separates.

The UK is limited by the existing cable infrastructure. It will take some years to feed optical fibre everywhere. So the possibilities of broadband are questionable.

[al_yrpal]

I know what you mean about loads of ugly aerials and dishes, I have got rid of everything but the one original Sky dish which is out of sight round the back hidden by a dormer.

Its easy to get Freesat Multiroom. You just need an LNB (thingy on the dish) which has mutiple feeds (mine has 4 and cost about 20 quid or so), and, a seperate decoder device on each TV. With Freesat you get HD now and soon BBC iplayer on your main TV, later possibly like in the USA, films on demand like BT Vision.
I have the Freesat panasonic decoder/recorder (2 feeds to record two programmes at once) on the main TV. This box is also a CD juke box, DVD player and internet access device so I can tune into Youtube and Picas photo albums on my big TV, and play a CD or a music playlist with a button press. This is quite expensive but completely does away with all the box clutter if you are like me and want to simplify things.

In addition, a £99 Goodmans HD decoder on an upstairs alternative HD TV, and another Goodmans SD decoder on a small kitchen TV. There is a twin cable running to the recorder and single cables to each of the other boxes. I never considered trying to split the feeds at all. My TV's all work fine with strong signals. I did the whole installation myself one sunny day. Its just setting up the dish, I took a decoder and small TV onto the flat roof adjacent to the dish to do this using the decoders inbuilt signal strength meter, and then run the cables to where the TV's are. Dead easy if everything is accessible, AND, no monthly fee for a load of things you never ever watch!

Al

[Mike02]

Originally Posted by tik33

Hi all,

I've got an engineer coming round tomorrow and would really appreciate some thoughts from you learned people on what I should be asking. Don't want him to fob me off with any old rubbish...

What I'm after is a multi-room freesat system. This is in a new build and I currently don't have a tv aerial or a sat. dish or a TV! - so it's all starting from scratch as it were.

Couple of questions:

1. should I be going for any particular sat dish or are they all much of a muchness?
2. Can the dish receive radio signals? I'm getting really bad reception from my indoor radio aerial and wondering whether I can hook it up through the co-ax to the dish - if necessary could I add a co-ax splitter (to split between TV & radio as they're both in the same place located next to the co-ax plate).
3. Is it better to go for a tv with freesat built in or get a separate box
4. finally if I had a dish, could I also get freeview through the dish - or is it a completely different signal?

(location London if it makes a difference)

Thanks!

Gus

with regard to point 4:

I would recommend you connect an 80 watts RMS* per channel amp
to your dish, preferably with QED speaker cable.

*Don't let anyone fob you off with peak music power!

[Mike02]

Originally Posted by Mike02

with regard to point 4:

I would recommend you connect an 80 watts RMS* per channel amp
to your dish, preferably with QED speaker cable.

*Don't let anyone fob you off with peak music power!

Edit: I was going to let this go all night for a laugh...
but come on everyone knows Freeview is through an aerial!

[tik33]

Originally Posted by Mike02

Edit: I was going to let this go all night for a laugh...
but come on everyone knows Freeview is through an aerial!

well - yes, it does seem a bit of a stupid question - i did know that freeview came through an aerial - but I didn't know if you can also get a signal through a dish - after all, all an aerial is is a piece of metal and some cable running to your tv - pretty much like the dish. my builders used a crowbar for a radio aerial - so what's saying a dish can't pick up normal tv signals...? in fact, it would seem as though that would be an obvious gap in the market - a dish that does both!

to the others - thanks for your replies - helpful. had the sat guy come round yesterday - and he says that a normal dish would be fine - didn't seem to think that the dish would have any different quality than an aerial - biggest problem is that we have tv wall plates fitted and I would need to change them all to a sat/tv combination (or at least sat. only for the time being). Problem is, that he is saying I will need a 24ft pole to get decent tv reception
(I'm North of a big building) - so I'm now considering my options and wondering whether tv aerial gives me most flexibility at this stage.

anyone know if I did plump for tv and got a tv with inbuilt freeview - whether I would need a separate box when freeview hd came along?

thanks again

[grahamlthompson]

Originally Posted by tik33

well - yes, it does seem a bit of a stupid question - i did know that freeview came through an aerial - but I didn't know if you can also get a signal through a dish - after all, all an aerial is is a piece of metal and some cable running to your tv - pretty much like the dish. my builders used a crowbar for a radio aerial - so what's saying a dish can't pick up normal tv signals...? in fact, it would seem as though that would be an obvious gap in the market - a dish that does both!

to the others - thanks for your replies - helpful. had the sat guy come round yesterday - and he says that a normal dish would be fine - didn't seem to think that the dish would have any different quality than an aerial - biggest problem is that we have tv wall plates fitted and I would need to change them all to a sat/tv combination (or at least sat. only for the time being). Problem is, that he is saying I will need a 24ft pole to get decent tv reception
(I'm North of a big building) - so I'm now considering my options and wondering whether tv aerial gives me most flexibility at this stage.

anyone know if I did plump for tv and got a tv with inbuilt freeview - whether I would need a separate box when freeview hd came along?

thanks again

A dish can't be used to pick up terrestrial signals simply because the lnb is designed to receive signals at a much much higher frequency than that used in terrestrial radio and TV. In fact the signals are extremely low power microwave signals in the same band as used in your microwave ovens. Terrestrial aerials are designed to pick up a specific range of frequencies thats why UHF TV aerials are smaller than vhf or DAB radio aerials

[logiciel]

Play nicely young Mike. Logi

[Mike02]

Originally Posted by logiciel

Play nicely young Mike. Logi

Sorry Logi, I get too carried away.

Mike