Satelilte queries

[mo786]

Hopefully this is the right forum - some queries may be better suited in a computer type forum which I can do later.

My current set up is this

1x SKY box (we don't have a subscription) - fed by the SKY minidish.

2x media PCs using freeview fed by an aerial on the roof. This aerial is split into 4 possible wires and 2 are in use. One goes to my living room and one to my bedroom where the media PCs are.

In one of my media PCs I have a TV card that allows me to watch 2 channels from 1 aerial feed. Therefore although I have 2 aerial wires in use I can actually utilise 3 feeds because the signal can be 'split'.

Now due to some building work in my house the aerial (and the chimeny that it is attached to) are coming off. Having done some research I figure I can run 8 satelite feeds from my existing SKY minidish - therefore I am thinking I will do away with the aerial and be reliant totally on sateilite.

Given that I could in theory retain an aerial feed into my house - is there any reason why I should? I will still keep the actual aerial and could have a feed brought into my house but this will be extra work.

My plan with the sateilite is to have all 8 wires come into a central location and then put satelite points on the wall of every room - I can then just connect up whichever 8 points end up with a TV 9i.e I will have more sateilite points that I can actually use - but doesn't matter).

At the moment I would have 1 feeding my SKY box - 2 to my main media PC and 1 to my secondary media PC.

The downside to going down this route is that any TV I have in the future will need a sateilite box/tuner (SKY or Feeesat) of somesort - but should not be a major issue as a lot of TVs come with inbuilt Freesat anyway.

I also understand that unlike a normal aerial, if I have 8 satelite feeds, I ONLY have 8 satelite feeds- i.e the satelite card in my PC cannot split a signal like my current freeview one can.

I wodnered if there were any flaws with this idea or is this what others are doing?

Any recommendations for a satelite card for the PC?

(need to retain the SKY box faor various reason)

 

[meansizzler]

Hi as you mentioned a reason to keep the aerial is so you don't have to buy sat box for each tv, when it rains the sky signal might go out but the freeview won't, also you would not have to buy sat tuners for your pc, windows media center likes freeviews over sat tuners.

You have a few options for this, but if you want to have all wires go to a central location something like a loftbox would do with diplexed tv/sat wall plates. But the neatest would be a multiswitch, i.e you have 4 cables from a Quattro lnb + 1 cable from your tv antenna going into the multiswitch, then 1 cable out of the switch into whatever rooms you want going into a diplexed wallplate which will give you tv and sat outputs.
For a Quattro LNB you would probably need a standard dish, don't think they do one for sky dish.

If you want to keep the sky dish I did something similar recently, 8 outputs from a tv antenna fitted with an 8 output masthead and 8 outputs from a octo lnb sky dish, I did not want to run 16 cables so I used 7 combiners to combine the tv/sat signal down one lead into diplexed tv/sat wall outlets. I then had one straight run sat cable into receiver and one straight run cable from tv antenna masthead amp into a masthead psu. Instead of running 16 cables into rooms I cut it down to 9 with use of diplexers, no noticeable signal loss either. But If I used a multiswitch instead it would of been a lots simpler and less cables from antenna/dish to the switch.

Some info here on loftboxes, combiners, diplexors, multiswitches

Skylink amplified splitters, Loft Boxes

Installing a multiswitch for multiple satellite points

I am sure you would get a few helpful replies on here also

 

[winston2010]

There are a few channels from an aerial you cannot get on Freesat.