[russellwood]

I have been reading this forum for sometime now and tought it was about time to join. I am undergoing a complete house referb, in the process i am looking at ways to distribute sky+/sky hd around my house. It is a diy house referb due to being a first time buyer and short of money.

I currently have sky/hd and a sky+ box. My plan is to change LNB on sky dish to a quattro LNB, then feed a labgear 12 way multiswich, from here 2 saterlite feed to each room (lounge, 3 bedrooms, dining room and kitchen just thinking of the future). Also to have a return coming from each room apart from the kitchen. The return from the lounge sky/hd would be used to feed one of the bedrooms and the kitchen (going through and labgear distribution amp) one bedroom with sky+ and the other with freesat. Does this sound like it will work. I have a diagram of how i think it would work will try and post it, as they say a picture paints 1000 words.

Cheers

russell

[MartinPickering]

Originally Posted by russellwood

My plan is to change LNB on sky dish to a quattro LNB

You might fall at the first hurdle if you have a standard Sky "minidish". Nobody makes a QUATTRO to fit.

Although you might bodge it, the results won't be as good as they should be. In addition, losses in the multiswitch usually require the use of "the next size larger" dish. I'd recommend a 60cm dish with QUATTRO LNB to match.

Apart from that, and your inventive spelling, the proposal should work.

[russellwood]

Ah right thought the standard dish would of been fine, will have a look into a new dish, sorry about the spelling did not see the spell check button.

Cheers

Russ

[ithorne]

Originally Posted by russellwood

Ah right thought the standard dish would of been fine, will have a look into a new dish, sorry about the spelling did not see the spell check button.

You could also look at the satcure (Satcure satellite dish LNBs digital TV aerial information) website - which I think is run by the Martin Pickering who answered below. They have loads of info including a book Piping TV Around the House - eBook which started me off down this road.

The owner can be a bit brusque and hates bad spellin' but his kit is good and his service is fast. And you don't get offered a spell check button in firefox!

[MartinPickering]

Originally Posted by ithorne

The owner can be a bit brusque and hates bad spellin' but his kit is good and his service is fast.

Thanks!

Originally Posted by ithorne

And you don't get offered a spell check button in firefox!

You do on a Mac. On Windoze you have to download a separate plugin.

[ithorne]

Originally Posted by MartinPickering

Thanks!

In your own words: Review

[MartinPickering]

It's all true.

[cmclean]

Do you have any opportunity to run cat 5 around the house as you mention you're thinking of 'in the future' and therefore it would make more sense to run Cat5 than coxial cable

You might also want to consider different options other than traditional sky boxes in each of the rooms

For example....

I've a 3 story Victorian house that I renovated and hence floodwired with CAt5 and put Coxial in each of the rooms and I hardly ever use the coaxial
I have a Sky HD box in my cellar fed around the ground floor of the house using 10m and 15m HDMI cables to a HDMI switch in the cellar
I've a Dreambox HD with another Sky multiroom card in the cellar which connects to the HDMI switch so can be used ground floor via HDMI cables

Then the really interesting stuff....
I have 3 x XBMC - 2 x Original Xbox and 1 x Windows XBMC all of which can select channels and stream live sat directly from the Dreambox which only require an ethernet connection - No coax/direct sat feed. Plus I get 100's of other advantages to running XBMC over and above the sat TV

Then another Dreambox which sits in another room which has direct sat feed which allows viewing of channels independant of what is on the DM800 or the Sky HD box if that makes sense

Sorry for going on but my point is that Cat5 might be the way to go and there are many alternatives to having a sky box stuck in every room