What will cat5 cabling do for me?

[soupdragon]

My brand new house has been kitted out with cat5 cabling to every room and also each room has a telephone socket. (each room also has an arial plug which I am assuming is the cat5 connection?)

If i get a sky hd box, can i send the picture and sound to each room over cat5, telephone line or combination of both?

Forgive me if this is a silly question but i don't have a clue how these things work.

I will also be making a cinema room with the idea of plugging the sky hd into my pj (and ps3, xbox360). I was going to get the sky hd exclusively in the cinema room but if i can put it into the livingroom instead and transmit the signal to the cinema room through the cat5 cable then i'll be delighted!

[vex]

Short Answer - Yes.

Long answer - Yes but depending on how many CAT5e cables you have at each point will depend on the cost of doing this.

Do you know if the cable behind your Telephone socket is telephone (4 cores) or CAT5e (8 Cores). Alternatively what is the hub like (where all the cables come back to)? Is there a brand name on it?

I would be very supprised if someone installed CAT5e cable and then Telephone cable next to it as they are both the same sort of costs.

By using BALUN's you can easily transmit HD signals and even via HDMI to other rooms. Personally stay away from the cheaper end ones as they can have problems. I tested one last week and it kept breaking up even over 5m.

Alternatively you could go a little further and share the same HD signal to upto 6 screens very cost effectively.

HTH

V.

[soupdragon]

Thanks for reply

i'll print this off and give to the electrician, the main hub in the living room has 4 coaxial cables poking out with no faceplate attached yet and the main telephone point in the hall has lots of wires hanging out - need to check but i think each individual wire has 4 coloured internal wires (all covered with a white plastic cable cover) which i am told will be left open until BT arrive on 3rd Sept.

Will this enable me to transmit hd signals or will I have to just send sd signals via the coaxial?

[iancalderbank]

if your hub has coax cables only then are you sure its cat5? the typical round coax connector as per most TV aerial distribution is NOT cat5.

do the sockets in your rooms look like this?
http://www.comms-express.com/product...ang-faceplate/

do you have something that looks like this
http://www.comms-express.com/product...atch-panel-1u/
in your hub?

if yes - then you have a structured cat5 system in your house which you can send more or less whatever signal you want over it (with the right baluns)

post some pics if you're not sure.
Ian

[Owen824]

you are probably best to take a photo of the hub, sockets and cables and post them on here for people to better understand what it is you have and what you can do with it.