TV distribution

[Jimmy3]

I have just moved in to a new (three storey) house and want to run a TV/Sky distribution system through the house, whilst i progressively work my way through it decorating i.e. having the floor boards up as i go.
However i have a dilemma!
The terrestrial TV ariel is in the loft and we have a sky dish on a pole on a ground floor extension. Should I:
a) mount a distribution amplifier on the ground floor somewhere relatively local to the sky dish, running the terrestrial ariel down the house to this?
or
b) mount it in the loft and run both of the Sky dish cables up to this?
Any ideas would be much appreciated.

 

[plugwash]

What kind of system do you want?

One sky box feeding multiple TVs?
Multiple TVs each with their own sky box?
Some combination?

Either way for most setups there is no need and little point to running the dish feeds and the aerial feed to the same place.

 

[Jimmy3]

I want a terestrial signal in every room.
I would at least like to be able to view Sky in all the rooms, even if this was achieved through one common Sky box, but eventually i would expect to want to install another one/two sky boxes in the other rooms.
As my terestrial arieal is in the loft i thought that this was the best location for an amplifier/distribution unit thingy!
I was going to run two coaxial cables from the loft to every bedroom (4) plus the kitchen and the lounge. So far this is 12 runs back to the loft.
As well as this i was going to run four cables from the loft to the Sky dish which, although only has two LNBs at the moment, would allow me to fit a quad at a later stage.
Does this have it all covered, or am i either overdoing it or lacking in some cabling?

 

[plugwash]

Personally I'd avoid running terrestrial and sky down the same cables, it can be done but it's just another source of loss and other potential problems and requires more bits and peices to combine signals and split them out again.

Unless you get into multiswitches (which I would avoid unless you plan to have more than four sattelite boxes) sattelite boxes should generally be connected directly to the dish, you can bring the cables via a central location if you want but there isn't a whole lot of point in doing so.

Assuming you have sky+ your main location wants a total of four cables, one from the terrestrial aerial to the sky box, two from the dish to the sky box and one from the "RF2" output on the sky box back to a distribution amplifier. From that distribution amplifier you then take the feeds to the secondry TVs (each with a magic eye to let them control the sky box).

Seperately i'd take pairs of cables from rooms you think you might want a sky box in in the future to the dish.