identifying a coax lead - sat or standard aerial

Ok, here's the thing. New flat (owned, purpose built block, 1970's) has a standard aerial point in the living room - looks old, ie original and works fine. Only one coax lead connected (I've removed the cover to check).

Another coax appears from the corner of one bedroom, quite long, cream colour with a fitting on the end suitable for plugging in to a tv. This does not work.

Looking outside, I can see three sat dishes and one has a lead that appears to enter the flat at floor level, although there's no evidence of it appearing inside the flat. It seems to enter at roughly the same corner as the above mentioned aerial plate, but I'm sure its not that lead I'm seeing when I take the plate off - its an old cable in there . I'm presuming the sat lead is fed into that room, then plastered in and fed along to the adjacent bedroom, where it just appears out of the plaster in the corner.

Therefore I'm wondering if the sat dish is connected to that lead in the bedroom.

So, even though that lead has a 'normal' tv plug on the end, could it still be connected to the dish?

Apart from getting up a ladder and doing a continuity check, is there any way to test if its connected to the dish? I suppose I could borrow a freesat box from someone but is there another way?

Any ideas welcome.

Edit. I've just been round and looked again at that sat dish. It has three connection points, one has the cream lead I mentioned plugged in, the other two have black leads plugged in, each lead looking like a pair. So that dish is feeding three flats but using different types of lead. Does that help at all?

No-one who knows what they're doing would take a feed off a dish LNB and terminate with an aerial plug (a Belling Lee). There's two reasons for this: aerial plugs are not designed to handle the frequency range that satellite uses. Second, all common satellite gear uses F connections.

None of the above stops an amateur putting the wrong plug on the cable because they don't know what they're doing.

Lucid just a thought but many moons ago, when satellite first appeared, I used to repair them I have this vague memory of making up an adapter lead as one or two models of very early boxes having Belling-Lee sockets.

Those boxes were analogue of course OP lead is connected to modern LNB. Is there any analogue satellites that a very old box might still have been used with until recently? I have no idea.

Other thought is that prior to digital terrestrial TV the original flat owner might have got sufficient signal by connecting TV aerial to dish. Probably as good, or better, than the proverbial 'coat hanger' or internal aerials used at the time.

AlanE, there's always going to be the odd exception, especially going back to the very early days of satellite. But once things settled down do you recall lots of satellite receivers using Belling Lee plugs or was it really just the odd exception.

As for connecting a dish feed to the aerial socket for analogue terrestrial TV... I can't see that working unless the TV had a built - in satellite receiver. It certainly wouldn't replace a terrestrial aerial on a terrestrial only TV.

My guess is that the flat was either wired with an extension from the lounge to the bedroom, or possibly the flats are equipped with a multi switch and that cable isn't connected at the head end.

Thanks everyone.

Interesting idea that the flats could have been equipped with a multi switch.

I'm now thinking, however, that a previous owner simply used 'standard' TV coax and fittings to connect to a spare output on the sat dish and plugged it into a sat receiver box and got good enough reception.

The choice is now to either:

1. run an extension off the existing terrestrial TV socket in the living room, into the bedroom or

2. remove the coax to the dish and replace with best cable and buy a sat receiver.

One more question though. If the second option is chosen, can I connect a PVR (a terrestrial one that I already have) into the sat receiver so as to record sat Freeview progs. Or would I have to go for a Sat Freeview PVR?

If reception is good enough with option 1 then that's the way to go.

Cheers all.

I can tell you for certain that a 3-output LNB doesn't exist. That means you should have access to TWO outputs on the dish, so you can run two cables (or twin cable) to your room(s). A satellite TV PVR requires two LNB connections for full functionality.

Thanks. I obviously need to have a closer look at that dish.

JohnB47 said:

One more question though. If the second option is chosen, can I connect a PVR (a terrestrial one that I already have) into the sat receiver so as to record sat Freeview progs. Or would I have to go for a Sat Freeview PVR?

If reception is good enough with option 1 then that's the way to go.

Cheers all.

Click to expand...

Sat Freeview is meaningless. Freeview is a terrestrial service. A Freeview PVR will not work off a satellite feed.

winston1 said:

JohnB47 said:

One more question though. If the second option is chosen, can I connect a PVR (a terrestrial one that I already have) into the sat receiver so as to record sat Freeview progs. Or would I have to go for a Sat Freeview PVR?

If reception is good enough with option 1 then that's the way to go.

Cheers all.

Click to expand...

Sat Freeview is meaningless. Freeview is a terrestrial service. A Freeview PVR will not work off a satellite feed.

Click to expand...

Forgive my ignorance but what is Freesat, if not Freeview via satellite?

Your ignorance is forgiven. Please read this to alleviate it:
http://www.satcure.co.uk/tech/freeview.htm

I'm not certain whether you hid a question there.

Also, if you've copied that text from a web site without permission, you'd probably be wise to delete it.