Yes, thanks Lucid.
I very much wanted to go with your suggestion, but was trying to get a little more information: specifically how many cables should be put in/between each room. ['Run the cabling to all the key points' was a little too vague for me].
Fair point. If something isn't clear to you, then you can ask for specific clarification. Starting another thread along the same lines will, in most cases, get you the same answer as before. So if you need to know exactly what's meant by a certain phrase, then you should really ask specific questions.
Wiring for Ethernet is like the spokes radiating out from the hub on a bicycle wheel.
The hub is a central point. You decide where that central point (hub) might be e.g. the basement, the eaves cupboard in a loft extension, a cupboard under the stairs, a dedicated part of a room.
What you need to bear in mind is that the hub will need an Ethernet connection to whatever router it is that provides Internet access. That might mean the hub point also being the point where the incoming BT or Virgin Media cable point terminates, or it might be sufficient to put in an Ethernet cable between the hub point and where the Internet Service Provider's (ISPs) router is currently (or likely to be) located. Should you forget to plan for this, and you decide the hub point is going to be somewhere buried in the middle of the house, then you ask VM or BT to wire up to that point, don't be surprised if they say no or want to charge you extra for the work involved.
Also, their services won't include moving furniture, lifting floorboards and chasing walls plus all the making-good that goes with that afterwards. If your ISP is Virgin Media, and you ask them to install to somewhere inaccessible, then you'll end up with coax cable running along the tops of your skirting boards. It pays to plan ahead.
For
Ethernet wiring, every socket point throughout your home has a Cat cable wired back to the hub. (Spokes on a bicycle wheel concept). Ethernet cables are never looped through daisy-chain-fashion from socket to socket. Wiring a single Ethernet cable to a room that requires several devices to be hardwired isn't the end of the world, but you'll need to use a powered splitter to share the Ethernet connection between those devices. That will never look as neat as a row of Ethernet sockets on a wall panel.
What do we mean by key points?
Simply, the place on the wall behind any device that would benefit from a wired Ethernet connection. For example, you might want your bedroom TV wall mounting and all the cables hiding. The place behind the TV will have a power socket, and an aerial connection, maybe a satellite cable point too,
and an Ethernet port. This is a
key point.
Let's say you're going to wall mount the TV for the lounge, but you also want to have a Sky or VM box for TV, and maybe the electronics for a surround system, and perhaps you'll also have a Blu-ray player and an Amazon Firestick. Maybe you would prefer the various boxes to be hidden away in a cupboard which is perhaps a couple of feet below the TV, or maybe somewhere off to one side.
In this room then, you have
two key points. You would add Ethernet points along with the wall sockets for power and signal and HDMI and speaker cables.
I'm really sorry, but I still don't get what you mean by 'wiring two ways'. That's two cables, presumably, but between where and where? Is that two cables to every room requiring media from a central 'hub' point, or what?
Where you're perhaps planning for a future buyer, and you're looking to remove any potential obstacles and head-off any minor objections, you would want to cover the most likely options that they have for receiving TV services. Freeview is easy. That's covered simply by providing an aerial signal to any recorder box location and to the TV point (the
key points).
Freesat (TV via a satellite dish rather than the aerial) requires one cable per tuner to each key point. The position behind the TV is a key point. The TV has ONE Freesat tuner; therefore you'd wire up for one satellite signal cable to this key point.
The place where any TV recorder might live though will need more than one satellite signal cable. Any decent Freesat recorder will need two cables. This key point then requires power, and HDMI connections, and Ethernet, and an aerial feed, and any speaker cable ends, and
two satellite signal cables.
Sky Q is satellite TV, but the Q box requires a feed from a different type of LNB (the device on the end of the arm where the cables connect for a satellite dish). The standard LNB for Freesat (and Sky before it changed to Sky Q) just won't work for Sky Q. So, if the aim is to cover as many bases as possible, then for satellite reception where you're unsure if a new owner might choose Freesat or Sky Q, then you would wire for
both eventualities, i.e. you would wire up
two ways.
You would have the standard satellite wiring which would work for Freesat and ordinary Sky+HD, and then you would have two extra wires which would go to a point on the outside of the building where a satellite dish for Q might be located in the future. These wires would be just for the Sky Q signal feed because (a) it's not compatible with Freesat, and (b) it is not compatible with any signal distribution gear that might be used for Freesat. The wiring for the Q LNB signal goes point-to-point, from the dish directly to the recorder point.
While we are on the subject of Sky Q, there is talk of Sky launching a full Sky TV service where there is no dish required. It would use the internet instead. This is another good reason to cable up for Ethernet, because -
if this ever happens - the average wireless router provided by Sky would really struggle to support a main box recording a couple of channels while playing live to the main TV and serving a couple of mini players. Also, if relying on wireless for that, the signal would take a hammering as soon as some additional devices stared to access the wireless network e.g. a couple of smart phones, a tables, an Alexa or Google speaker or two, someone gaming online, someone else downloading a film or streaming from Netflix/Amazon/Apple TV. You know; all the stuff that typically happens over a weekend or in an evening when the whole family is home.
Sky originally planned for this to happen in the UK in 2018, then 2019, but now the project has been quietly sidelined. Meanwhile, the service has launched for
Sky's Italian customers.
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