Can a V+ box output to 2 TV's?

Paul-r1

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Hi everyone,

Sorry if this has been asked before, but what is the best way of getting the TV signal from a single V+ box, to two TV's?

I know a bit about remote eyes's (Is there one specific for V+ boxes like the Sky+ boxes?).

To explain a bit more, my mother curently has a Virgin box downstairs and a Virgin box upstairs in her bedroom.
She has decided to upgrade to V+ (after falling in love with my Sky+ but not being able to have Sky herself), but cannot afford the cost of 2 V+ boxes.
I therefore said that I am sure she could install the V+ box downstairs and connect it to her TV upstairs in her room also.

Could I use the existing cabling thats already their?

Any help or guidance you chaps can give me would be greatly appreciated.

Oh,and before anyone asks, we are talking normal TV source and not HD source, and we are not talking about having different channels on the TV's at the same time. She lives alone.

Thanks

Paul
 
If as you say the box is working in Standard Definition mode then there's no problem. The V+ box has an RF output, preset to channel 52 but can be changed in the engineer menu.

If there is coax from the V+ box to the other TV that's all you need to view the V+ box on the other TV.

If you want remote control you will need a magic eye, but note that although the V+ box uses standard infra red, the RF socket doesn't provide power so you will need a separate power supply.

regards

Brian
 
I know a bit about remote eyes's (Is there one specific for V+ boxes like the Sky+ boxes?).

Any of these should work. As Brian mentioned, you will need the accompanying PSU with them :)
 
Sorry everyone...me again.

Virgin engineer came this morning and connected the downstairs TV.
I advised him I wanted to run the TV upstairs utilising the existing cabling. Not a problem he said and gave me a small "plug" that went on the end of the cable upstairs converting the end of the cable to a normal aerial socket that I plugged direct into the TV.

I then made the biggest mistake ever.....I let him go WITHOUT checking the upstairs TV was working :oops:

Needless to say, after he had gone I went upstairs and the TV was picking up no signal. It did an auto scan for any digital channels and found none. It then did a search for analogue channels and found none.

I went down stairs to make sure the cable was connected to the back of the V+ box and sure enough it was.

It was at this point that I noticed the downstairs TV was conected via HDMI and SCART. Thinking this was odd I disconnected the scart and sure enough, the picture on the downstairs TV was unaffected.

I then remembered reading on these wonderfull forums somewhere that the V+ box cannot output in 2 different formats at the same time. I went into the engineers menu on the box and found the option of connecting via HDMI, SCART or Componant. I assume (please correct me here) that I actualy want to connect via normal RF lead with a simple "Y" splitter? One branch feeding the downstairs TV and one branch feeding the upstairs TV (Into which I will connect the remote eye when I purchase one)???

Any help would be most appreciated.....oh, and regarding the products that benraz69 kindly posted up, anyone have any recomendations or are they all pretty much the same as each other performance and cost wise?

Thanks again everyone.

Paul
 
Firstly if the V+ box is set up to output to the "main" TV by HDMI then the RF modulated output is disabled and the "TV" scart is disabled. However the "VCR" scart is enabled and one can add an RF modulator to this scart to send the picture to another room on an analogue RF feed via coax.

You will also need to add a "magic eye" as described above to control the V+ box from the other room.
 
So can you simply disable the HDMI and that will enable RF?

And vice versa when you want to change it back?
 
Thanks again to everyone for their help.

I just want to double check the following before I get my mum to spend her hard earned.

She needs to purchase 1 these: http://www.tvlink.co.uk/tvlinkplus.htm

She will also need one of these: http://www.nexxia.co.uk/Hi-Fi_Accessories/rf_modulators.htm?gclid=CMXz0Pf9zpMCFQyI1Qod6UZXkw
(The NX-RF-003 I was thinking)

And finaly one of these: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/V-REMOTE-CONT...ryZ67881QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

The cable run to her bedroom TV is about 10 metres if that makes any difference.

Cheers

Paul
 
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Any help would be most appreciated.....oh, and regarding the products that benraz69 kindly posted up, anyone have any recomendations or are they all pretty much the same as each other performance and cost wise?
Similarly priced, but the Smart-Blaster is probably the best of the three.

So can you simply disable the HDMI and that will enable RF?

And vice versa when you want to change it back?
Yep :)


Yep, all looks fine. Aswell as the tvLINK®plus & PSU, you'll need a standard tvLINK (available in black or silver). All three units are often sold as a kit like this for example :)
 
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OK everyone. She finally bought everything as described above and I went round on Saturday morning toi wire it all up for her.
3 hours later and all I had managed to acheive was getting myself all stressed out !!

OK. Let me explain.

I connected a scart cable into the back of the V+ box where it is marked "VCR".
I then connected the other end of the scart cable into the RF modulator.
I then connected a small length of (supplied) coax cable into the output socket of the RF modulator.
I plugged the other end of the coax cable into the TV link box marked "Aerial".
I didn't bother connecting the IR devices at this stage, so next I plugged the end of the coax that runs upstairs, into the "Main TV" output socket of the TV link. I then went upstairs and connected the end of the coax cable (again I didn't fit the IR reciever unit at this stage) and plugged it direct into the back of the TV. I must point out at this stage that this TV has no other sources or aerials connected to it.
I then plugged the RF Modulator and the TV link into the mains. LEDs on both units lit up nicely. V+ box was on so ready to tune the upstairs TV.
Went back upstairs and ran an autoscan and whilst it picked up some faint ghosting of the channel, that was all.
I chose another channel on the RF modulator and did the same. Same result!!
I ended up runnning an autoscan on every single channel on the RF modulator and the best I could mange was either sound with no picture, or a bit of colour picture (totaly unwatchable) and no sound.

I unplugged everything and started again to make sure there was no loose connections. Made no difference. I called the helpline number that came with the TV link and it was number not recognized !!

I tried plugging the scart into the "TV" output of the V+ box and still nothing.
I tried remving all the TV link stuff and only running the RF modulator and still nothing!!

Please, please can someone help me as I feel bad that she has spent all this money because of me and she still cant watch TV in her room :lease:

Thanks

Paul
 
Dodgy connectors or lead ??? Sorry this is a bit basic, but sometimes wires in plugs and sockets easily become dislodged inside.
 
I tried plugging the scart into the "TV" output of the V+ box and still nothing.
I wouldn't worry about trying this, as the "TV" scart socket is disabled whilst HDMI is in use - as Boostrail's already mentioned.
I tried remving all the TV link stuff and only running the RF modulator and still nothing!!
Good idea, I wouldn't bother reconnecting the tvLINK stuff until you've got everything else working. I'd try getting it working with just a short length of coax first (1m or so). If that works, then it's the long run of coax that's at fault. If it doesn't, post back :smashin:
 
The coax should be fine as it was running a standard NTL box upstairs in her room for about 12 months. The only thing I have had to do is connect connectors on both ends of the cable as they have sattelite fixings and I need coax fittings. Would that make a difference?

The scart itself is a nice decent MONSTER scart and all the other sections of coax I have used are all brand new and are what came supplied with the various items.

I checked all connections were tight and firm countless times but still no difference. :confused:
 
The only thing I have had to do is connect connectors on both ends of the cable as they have sattelite fixings and I need coax fittings. Would that make a difference?
Could well do, hence my above suggestion.

The scart itself is a nice decent MONSTER scart and all the other sections of coax I have used are all brand new and are what came supplied with the various items.
Have you also tried connecting the scart directly from the V+ to a TV? This would confirm that the V+ is outputting a picture from the "VCR" socket & that the scart lead is indeed working properly.

I know this is all a bit trivial, but you have to start somewhere :suicide:
 
Thanks for all the suggestions....keep em coming ;)

The scart lead was connected from her DVD player and was working fine. I only disconnected it the day I tried to connect her TV upstairs.

I haven't yet tried connecting a TV direct to the other end of the scart yet only because her upstairs TV is 32" and is wired into her wardrobe (I would need to remove the plug). However when I go back I will take my small portable 16" flatscreen TV and try it.

With regards to the connectors on the end of the cable, these screw on and as such I dont see how they could be loose or not making good contact. Would you recomend me cutting the wire and fitting normal coax cable ends instead?

Cheers

Paul
 
I haven't yet tried connecting a TV direct to the other end of the scart yet only because her upstairs TV is 32" and is wired into her wardrobe (I would need to remove the plug). However when I go back I will take my small portable 16" flatscreen TV and try it.
If there's no small TV in the house, you could always use the TV that is connected via HDMI. No need to unplug the HDMI cable - just connect the scart lead & a short length of coax, then switch between the three AV inputs to see if you get a picture on all of them :)

Would you recomend me cutting the wire and fitting normal coax cable ends instead?
Only after establishing that it's definitely the coax at fault.
 
Last edited:
OK everyone.

Back round at my mums and I have the following update.

I connected my small portable TV via scart cable going from the "VCR" output on the Virgin box, into AV input 1 on the small TV. Picture quality was great and so was the sound.
Great. I now know the Virgin box is outputting a picture via the VCR scart ouput.
I then unplugged the scart from the back of the small TV and plugged it into the "Input" on the RF modulator box.
I then plugged another scart into the "Output of the RF modulator box and the other end back into the small TV. Powered on the modulator and the picture quality on the small TV was black and white, very fuzzy, and sound coming and going!!! Unwatchable basically.
I then disconnected the scart lead from the small TV to the modulator box, and instead connected it via a normal section of coax cable and set the RF box to channel 21
Started autoscan on the small TV and again, then best picture it can pick up is totaly unwatchable with sound coming and going!
I re-did the autoscan on all RF modulator channs 21 through to 69 and whilst some channs gave a better picture quality than others, they are all unwatchable!!!
The coax cable is a brand new item with moulded end plugs so it's unlikely to be that at fault. Especialy seeing as the MONSTER scart cable also gave very poor picture.

So, are we thinking it's the RF box that is at fault? Should I request a replacement?

Again, all thoughts and ideas are very much appreciated. :lease:

Thanks
 
It could also be RF channel interference. I've previously tried RF distribution as I wanted to have all my AV equipment shared around all the house TVs with IR control from all rooms. I've had moderate success but using an RF modulator failed dismally.

I've currently got distributed the terrestrial channels that also come down the cable feed, two TiVos, a video player, an xbox xbmc media streamer, and V= if I take it off HDMI (Although I'm now going to experiment with the VCR scart!)

The problem I've found is that as the RF frequency gets higher, the signal gets poorer depending on the length of the RF cable between the downstairs and TV receiving. Downstairs is really clear, but anything upstairs is very fuzzy with lots of noise. Lower TV channels are clearer, but the TiVos, which output on channels 49 and 55 are worse. The Xbox uses the video as its RF modulator (and I'll try the V+ through that later)

I did try an RF modulator to take out the video player and give me more room under the TV (15 devices and counting), but it was dreadful so it got resold on ebay and I went back to using the video as the modulator and scart input switcher even though it's rather large and never gets used for videos other than the odd archive to DVD.

I've also got various RF boosters and I suspect that my signal may be overboosted but I've got no way of checking...:(

Anyway, check that your modulator output isn't clashing with any of the other channels whizzing around your RF and set it to at least 2 higher or lower than any others. Also set it to the lowest possible RF output frequency as this will resist the dropoff of signal over long cable runs.
 
Last edited:
Hi everyone....AGAIN.

OK. The company very kindly exchanged the RF box and I repeated everything as per the post I made above.
Result?.......exactly the same as the 1st RF box.

I really don't know what to do now....

:(
 
Anyone got any suggestions?

Also, am I right in saying that even if I did get a picture she wouldn't be able to see the menus?
She wants to be able to watch stuff she has on her planner, whilst upstairs in bed.

I am thinking the only option left open to me is a long HDMI cable (Bugger knows how I will be able to route that upstairs) and a HDMI splitter like this:

http://www.hdcable.co.uk/products/hd-switches/CESP0102B/

Then use the "Magic eye" on the existing RF cable for the changing channs part?

:lease:
 
Also, am I right in saying that even if I did get a picture she wouldn't be able to see the menus?
Correct (unless the V+ is in SD mode & connected by scart/coax, rather than HDMI).

I am thinking the only option left open to me is a long HDMI cable (Bugger knows how I will be able to route that upstairs) and a HDMI splitter like this:

http://www.hdcable.co.uk/products/hd-switches/CESP0102B/

Then use the "Magic eye" on the existing RF cable for the changing channs part?
Sounds like a plan :thumbsup:

Make sure that wherever you source your 10m HDMI cable from, that they'll be willing to take it back if it doesn't work. 10m is a little long for HDMI, but is should be okay :)

Seems a shame you never managed to utilise the existing coax in place. I take it you or your mother don't have an old VCR you could use to modulate the scart output, rather than the dedicated modulator you were having problems with-?
 
would a wireless scart option

INVISIBLE SCART 200 WIRELESS AV SYSTEM

be easier?

works A/V & remote wirelessly whether you using HDMI or scart

only down side seems to be no menu as per V+ VCR scart socket
 
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