What's the best way to

[marquee]

take an aeriel connection around the house.

If say I've got my co-ax in the loft from my outside aeriel how then would I split this off to take to the relevant rooms?

I know about y-splitters and the like but to be honest the connection doesn't seem too great.

Is there a more effective way of doing this which gives a better end product....an amplified splitter box or something?

Cheers

 

[2scoops0406]

Try here http://www.philex.com/

 

[marquee]

Just the job mate

 

[mrscalex]

This probably isn't the answer you want but I'll supply it as the 'Rolls-Royce' answer. One day all houses will be wired like this as sure as most homes now have a telephone (which can also run over this ystem). I'm fortunate enough to be doing it myself at the moment.

With 2 crucial ceilings down and corresponding walls full of chases for electrics I can flood the house with hidden Cat 5 cable. This presents as several RJ45 sockets in each room which run back to a central patch panel. This system is most commonly seen being used as the way an office connects it's PCs together. However many different AV services can be run over Cat 5. From this distribution point I can feed out eg a digital (Freeview) signal to as many rooms as I want.

It does require extra electronics at either end but using this system these are reasonably priced:

http://www.kat5.tv/index1.html

Robert
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[AdamW]

If you want some nifty rackmount stuff (anyone who likes cat-5 LOVES 19" equipment racks!), I found this
company recently who sell various cases.

Also, even Screwfix do some pretty decent patch panels. No point in doing all that trick wiring if you then just terminate it with RJ45 plugs and have the wires dangling free.

Post some photos if you can, we all love to covert the wiring of others.

 

[Damocles]

Amplifiers need power. Anything that needs power goes wrong. It does depend upon how good your signal is in the first place, whether you might just as well use splitters. Even just twisting the wires together works sometimes.

Oh, and you may already have a free amplifier, its called a video recorder. Or any of those boxes which take an aerial in and aerial out socket. The built in amplifier may be enough to boost the signal on around your house, with video output added in.

 

[2scoops0406]

Just the job mate

Just one tip, if you're going to multiplex different sources on a single cable, buy top quality cable, don't skimp here, the best stuff will probably add about £25 to the installation, but it is well worth it.

I Pity the poor souls Cat 5'ing their houses

 

[marquee]

Thanks to each and all for your advice.

Some interesting solutions then.

It's really just one aeriel in the living room and one in each bedroom so I will probably just use a 9V DC splitter in the loft,one longish cable run then some fairly short ones to each bedroom.

Point taken about the quality of cable.

CAT5 I don't really know much about apart from it networks PC's and is capable of doing other things too.
I can make it off but will have to look in to the patch panel side of things.

Cheers again

 

[AdamW]

Just the job mate

Just one tip, if you're going to multiplex different sources on a single cable, buy top quality cable, don't skimp here, the best stuff will probably add about £25 to the installation, but it is well worth it.

The good cable, definitely right there. If you go to Maplin even their good coaxes really aren't much more than the cheapo ones.

I Pity the poor souls Cat 5'ing their houses

Well, I would be using cat-6 myself, but cabled networks are still the shizzle for a nizzle who wants televizzle over TCP/I-Pizzle.

I.e. a cabled network has far better performance than any wireless system currently on the market. You can buy proprietary 108mbps 801.11g equipment, however after overheads the vanilla 801.11g has a MAXIMUM information speed of just 24mbps. Maximum. Wired 100mbps ethernet has a maximum information speed of about 94mbps. 4 times as much.

However 1gbps ethernet is readily available and cheap, with a net transfer speed of... 950mbps! More than enough for present-day activities, even I would think it overkill! There is the 10gbps over copper standard, but I bet the bend radii are a metre or so.

Best solution: cabled network + wireless network, alongside each other. Then you have fast file transferring indoors, plus surfing in the garden. Grrrrrrrreat.

 

[2scoops0406]

Just the job mate

Just one tip, if you're going to multiplex different sources on a single cable, buy top quality cable, don't skimp here, the best stuff will probably add about £25 to the installation, but it is well worth it.

The good cable, definitely right there. If you go to Maplin even their good coaxes really aren't much more than the cheapo ones.

I Pity the poor souls Cat 5'ing their houses

Well, I would be using cat-6 myself, but cabled networks are still the shizzle for a nizzle who wants televizzle over TCP/I-Pizzle.

I.e. a cabled network has far better performance than any wireless system currently on the market. You can buy proprietary 108mbps 801.11g equipment, however after overheads the vanilla 801.11g has a MAXIMUM information speed of just 24mbps. Maximum. Wired 100mbps ethernet has a maximum information speed of about 94mbps. 4 times as much.

However 1gbps ethernet is readily available and cheap, with a net transfer speed of... 950mbps! More than enough for present-day activities, even I would think it overkill! There is the 10gbps over copper standard, but I bet the bend radii are a metre or so.

Best solution: cabled network + wireless network, alongside each other. Then you have fast file transferring indoors, plus surfing in the garden. Grrrrrrrreat.

And in 10 years ? esp bearing in mind cat 7 doesn't use RJ45's? I can see sparky's rubbing their hands re re-wire costs. No thanks !!

 

[AdamW]

Well, cat-7 cable is totally unsuitable for domestic installations anyway. It is very thick and shielded I believe. Would probably be like working with meter tails! And to certify it for 10gbps use the bend radii would be massive. Even fibre would be a cheaper and easier option I reckon.

Wireless has it's place, but my network really does need sustained reliable speeds of 25mbps minimum! As can be seen that is really stretching the current wireless standards. Not sure how much further the wireless standards will go due to bandwidth constraints. Plus people are already experiencing issues with running several networks in that same bandwidth as they switch on their new equipment to find their neighbours already have wireless networks. It is the equivalent of a neighbour sharing your 100A service fuse, then suddenly deciding they are installing a 10kW shower... it reduces your quality of service somewhat!

And with a switched wired network you have all that bandwidth for each connection. With wireless I could probably just about manage with 801.11g for just me, but if I moved to a house and got a similarly techy housemate then we would have problems.

If I were to move tomorrow, and find myself in a 3/4 bed house the network would have a 100mbit switch with a 1gb uplink to the server. That way I would be pretty much covered for anything I might want to do in the next few years.

 

[2scoops0406]

Well, cat-7 cable is totally unsuitable for domestic installations anyway. It is very thick and shielded I believe. Would probably be like working with meter tails! And to certify it for 10gbps use the bend radii would be massive. Even fibre would be a cheaper and easier option I reckon.

Wireless has it's place, but my network really does need sustained reliable speeds of 25mbps minimum! As can be seen that is really stretching the current wireless standards. Not sure how much further the wireless standards will go due to bandwidth constraints. Plus people are already experiencing issues with running several networks in that same bandwidth as they switch on their new equipment to find their neighbours already have wireless networks. It is the equivalent of a neighbour sharing your 100A service fuse, then suddenly deciding they are installing a 10kW shower... it reduces your quality of service somewhat!

And with a switched wired network you have all that bandwidth for each connection. With wireless I could probably just about manage with 801.11g for just me, but if I moved to a house and got a similarly techy housemate then we would have problems.

If I were to move tomorrow, and find myself in a 3/4 bed house the network would have a 100mbit switch with a 1gb uplink to the server. That way I would be pretty much covered for anything I might want to do in the next few years.

Hence the move to universal digital TV

 

[plugwash]

cat5 is (just about) capable of going up to gigabit

and most people don't really need more than 10 megabit atm (100 is nice but the difference is only noticable when moving big files around)

it should also be borne in mind that normal pci maxes out at about 1 gigabit

if you really wan't to make your network future proof use conduit and make sure the bends are gentle enough to pull fibre through at a later date

 

[2scoops0406]

This is getting a bit off topic here but.... Possibly in the future imagine all data being transmitted via Cat 5.

200+ digital channels possibly in HDTV and 7.1 Surround sound
100,000 Mbps Broadband (based on 1994 usual modem speed of 9.6 kbps, 2004 broadband at 1000 mbps)
All telephony VoIP
DVD playback distribution with 7.1 surround sound
Streaming Audio
Video on Demand
Household secutiy monitoring

Cat 5, I don't think so !!

Remember when Bill Gates famously said, I can't see why anyone would need more than 640 K of memory !!

Also there is only a need for 5 computers in the whole world.

 

[Diyisfun]

If you take the cable to the location of your VCR & Freeview, you can wire the distributor / amplifier from the output of the VCR & watch vcr & Freeview in all rooms.