Av cabling and Future Proofing

[Mi7OMS]

Future proof AV cabling

Hey guys,

Im a newbie, and need help.

I'm doing a full house renovation and want either Virgin or Sky installed in 4 rooms. These rooms will also require to view a feed from a CCTV unit. I also want freeview or freesat as a backup available to 6 rooms which will include the other 4 rooms plus 2 additional ones. Is there a unit i can buy to help do this?

As I am unsure of whether to go for Sky or Virgin I would like to install cabling that would work with both. I have been told that coaxial cable will do the job- but again I'm unsure which exact cable to go for.

This has been an expensive whole house renovation and I'm wanting to try and avoid having to recable etc. anytime soon.

Your ideas/comment would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[dante01]

If wanting to distribute an HD video signal from either a SKY or Virgin STB then you'd need to be using their HDMI outputs. If wanting to distribute this throughout your home then you'd need to be looking at HDMI over cat6 and probably an HDMI matrix of some description?

What do you intend doing in relation to either SKY and/or Virgin? Do you intend on having several STBs in various locations or do you intend on having a single STB in a central location outputting a signal to various TVs? Are you wanting to feed the source signal to several boxes or are you wanting to distribute the output of one box to several locations?

I'd suggest you run at least three runs of cat6 plus high quality digital coax to each room from a central node 0 location. This would allow for future expansion and facilitate the distribution of both RF as well as digital signals to every room from the central location. Note that if wanting both antenna based freeview and cable or sat based TV and if wanting to use several STBs to fascilitate this, you cannot mux the signal associated with the freeview with the digitally encryped feed signals associated with the cable or sat boxes. If wanting this type of arrangement then you'd need separate coax cabling for the individual platforms sat, cable and or Freeview.

 

[Ronski]

Note that if wanting both antenna based freeview and cable or sat based TV and if wanting to use several STBs to fascilitate this, you cannot mux the signal associated with the freeview with the digitally encryped feed signals associated with the cable or sat boxes. If wanting this type of arrangement then you'd need separate coax cabling for the individual platforms sat, cable and or Freeview.

That's not strictly correct, you can supply satellite and freeview down the same cable. Take a look at this post and the following ones where I go into detail on my setup.

 

[dante01]

You cannot mix an encrypted cable TV feed with RF, UHF or any other source. I'd generally suggest not using the same cabling anyway in order to allow for changes in the future. If you use a single coax cable for everything then you remove the possibility of replacing satellite TV provision with cable. Sat and cable TV can use the same type of coax so there's no real issue having a separate feed distribution for them than that used for Freeview.

 

[Joe Fernand]

'Your ideas/comment would be appreciated' - call in a Pro who can design/install a flexible system with some degree of future proofing.

Joe