Are satellite dishes redundant?

Hello,

I am decorating a few rooms which have twin satellite cables into from the outside probably installed in the mid 80s.

My question - is it worth adjusting these to be wall plates? I do not use Sky or a satellite tv service but would feel a fool to remove this if this is still something people will use? Appreciate this is a slight crystal ball question although I am aware that Sky have announced a 'dishless' service

They are in my house, but, might be useful in future... freesat and freeview are merging, so in theory, a good antenna will provide the same service (I think?) but some people love Sky, don't they? Although is that all available over internet now?

Old wall plates and cables from decades ago aren't likely to be of much use. A new Sky install is 2 cables from the dish to the box in one room only. Other rooms do not require any cables.

The Sky 'dishless' service isn't available in the UK and there is no date for it to be available here. As it relies on decent broadband for everything, it's not likely to be available here for some time, as large areas of the UK still don't have broadband that's anywhere near good enough.

flameport said:

Old wall plates and cables from decades ago aren't likely to be of much use. A new Sky install is 2 cables from the dish to the box in one room only. Other rooms do not require any cables.

The Sky 'dishless' service isn't available in the UK and there is no date for it to be available here. As it relies on decent broadband for everything, it's not likely to be available here for some time, as large areas of the UK still don't have broadband that's anywhere near good enough.

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Thanks,

Most rooms have the same twin satellite cables into them run on the outside of the house, I will remove these as and when I get round to them

https://www.diynot.com/diy/threads/re-wiring-all-tv-satellite-system-what-i-need-to-do-help.547804/ I read through this thread for anyone else that is looking at this, good input overall

We're at bit of a fork in the road regarding the future direction of satellite. Before we get to that and what it means for signal distribution, it's probably useful to do a Pros-vs-Cons for Freeview (TV aerial) versus Freesat (sat dish) because this more than anything will determine whether one system over the other has a benefit to the reader.

The case for a TV aerial system for Freeview

Pros:

• The most popular way of receiving a live TV transmission
• Every TV comes with a Freeview tuner, and every lounge-sized TV should include the ability to receive HD transmissions
• The signal is relatively easy to distribute, and the distribution amps themselves are not especially expensive

Cons:

• Although it's claimed that 98.5% of the country can get Freeview, not all of the UK receives the same coverage. Some parts are served by Freeview Lite transmitters with a more limited list of channels
• The space in the Freeview channel roster is limited, so we're unlikely to see significantly more HD channels unless something major changes. For this reason it's difficult to foresee Freeview supporting any UHD channels at all
• There is fairly high signal compression which shows up as a slight loss of picture resolution and a greater tendency for pixilation when the screen image shows a lot of motion e.g. explosions, moving water etc

The case for a TV aerial system for satellite/Freesat

Pros:

• The channel list between Freeview and Freesat is not identical. Freesat offers more HD channel versions than its aerial-based counterpart
• UK area coverage nearly as good as Freeview (98% for Freesat), but, more importantly, every address gets the same channel range i.e. there's no Lite version as with Freeview. Every household gets the full-fat version
• Satellite is not so limited in transmission space as terrestrial aerial systems. This means that there's more chance of a growth in the number of HD channels available. There are even UHD channels on satellite, but these aren't yet part of the Freesat channel roster
• IMO the picture quality is marginally better because less signal compression is used compared to Freeview

Cons:

• The core public service broadcast (PSB) channel range is the same between Freesat and Freeview (it has to be, by law), but Freesat lost some of the bonus '+1' and HD channels in the Channel 4 bouquet after a disagreement on price between the service and the broadcaster
• Most TVs will need the added cost of a Freesat receiver/recorder
• Because the recorders require two cables, there's a little more work and a higher cost in signal cabling
• The signal isn't as easy/inexpensive to distribute as aerial signals for Freeview

Streaming as an alternative to linear TV from either Freeview of Freesat is gaining ground. It's still in the minority, but as today's teens and twenty-somethings become renters and home owners in their own right in the future then I can only see the trend increasing. The go-to entertainment services for this and a growing range of age groups is online.

Where catch-up and online can't currently compete with live TV is in the breadth of programming output per week and its relevance to local audiences. In simpler terms, there's very little local news or regional programming, and only a smattering of the more specialist-interest program output that gets uploaded for streaming. Its forte is film and TV box sets.



The technological shift in the way we receive satellite signals

Sky launched its digital satellite in the late 90s. It also set us to continue down the path of one-cable-per-tuner for basic satellite installations. (Note: I'm not talking here about people with 1.5m dishes and multiple satellite signal reception). This is why we've had 4-output and 8-output LNBs and rooms wired directly from those dish signals with one or two cables.

In February 2016 Sky Q launched, and with it brought the first widespread used of wideband LNBs. This moved satellite signal reception and recording much closer to the way aerial systems work.

Putting it in very general terms, and aerial is a wideband receiving system. It presents all of the signals to the TV tuner, and it's the tuner which dips in to that stream to select a certain frequency. The stream can be distributed to several tuners all of which can dip in independently.

Conventional Sky digital LNB systems work differently. The signals are split first by polarisation: Horizontal and Vertical. And also by frequency range: low band is 10.70-11.70 GHz, and high band is 11.70-12.75 GHz. This gives us four different reception groups: Low band H, low band V, high band H, and high band V. An LNB with a single output connection switches between these four bands depending voltage and a pilot tone. There are two voltage levels; 13V and 18V. Each one can be with or without pilot tone. A Quad or an Octo LNB is simply four or 8 LNBs in a single housing.

The reason why satellite LNB feeds can't be split and distributed like aerial signals is because of this Low/High H/V switching. Each socket on a conventional Sky/SkyHD or Freesat recorder uses the voltage and pilot tone to direct one of the LNBs to the appropriate frequency and polarisation group that contains the channel required. Allowing two receivers to attempt to control one LNB will eventually lead to a clash

A wideband LNB as used by Sky Q does away with the low band / high band frequency split. The signal still has two polarisation elements though. A Sky Q recorder has two inputs. One is for horizontally polarised signals. The other is for vertically polarised signals. The recorder has multiple tuners, and all tuners requiring signals from the H polarisation can dip in to that stream at the same time. The same goes for any tuners requiring signals from the vertical polarisation.


The fork in the road relates to the satellite hardware and whether or not it is compatible with wideband LNBs.

All TVs with satellite reception appear to work on the legacy four-mode-switching system of LNB control. This goes for TVs with the Freesat tuner and EPG, and for those which simply say they have a satellite tuner but don't subscribe to Freesat's channel list. These won't work with the signal from a new wideband LNB. They need a conventional LNB as fitted to Sky Digital and Sky HD sat dishes.

Most Freesat receiver/recorder boxes work this way too. However, about 18 months ago the company newly appointed to manufacture official Freesat recorder boxes launched their products. This is a French company called Arris. They took over from Humax.

The Arris boxes are what you'll find in stores and online and they're marketed as Freesat 4K, but that's slightly misleading. However, these new boxes are compatible with either the wideband LNB signals or the Legacy 4-mode versions, and there are some important differences in the number of recordings that can be made simultaneously depending on which type of LNB is used.


So what happens in a house with a mix of old and new Freesat recorders?

For a house with a legacy LNB - in most cases a quad LNB installed for Sky Digital - then the new Arris box will work with that and give the ability to record one channel whilst watching/pausing/recording another channel live on TV. The two remaining LNB outputs can be used for another dual channel recorder or to feed two receiver boxes.

Where more than two recorders are required, the LNB can be changed to a legacy Octo with 8 outputs. This will feed up to four dual channel recorders.

A third option is to change the LNB for a hybrid. This has six outputs. There are two wideband outputs to support a new generation Freesat recorder. The other four outputs are the legacy type.

These aren't the only options, but they are the main choices that use the existing wiring already in place going from the dish to each room.



Are satellite dishes redundant?

IMO, no. Far from it. Sky remains the most popular subscription TV service. Freesat offers some advantages, particularly in picture quality, which are becoming more important as TV screen sizes continue to increase.


Should I keep the wiring in place?

Where it's old and clearly past it then probably not if it's getting in the way of decorating and there's no chance you'll ever have a Freesat box in the room. On the other hand, running cabling takes time and costs money. Ripping it out now only to replace it in a couple of years time seems an odd choice.

CVHO said:

Hello,

I am decorating a few rooms which have twin satellite cables into from the outside probably installed in the mid 80s.

My question - is it worth adjusting these to be wall plates? I do not use Sky or a satellite tv service but would feel a fool to remove this if this is still something people will use? Appreciate this is a slight crystal ball question although I am aware that Sky have announced a 'dishless' service

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Only IF you have Fibre broadband and the house is LAN cabled to all TV points from the router.

The more and more use of WiFi will cause more and more interference issues - to stop that the routers, etc get increased TX power which then becomes a self-defeating round of power increases.

And as for Power Line adapters - eventually you'll end up with similar problems.

Lucid said:

Should I keep the wiring in place?

Where it's old and clearly past it then probably not if it's getting in the way of decorating and there's no chance you'll ever have a Freesat box in the room. On the other hand, running cabling takes time and costs money. Ripping it out now only to replace it in a couple of years time seems an odd choice.

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Thank you for this detailed post, I fall into the streaming category, using Netflix, prime and YouTube for my media needs.

I will probably remove the cabling in this room as I intend it to be a nursery for the next 2-5 years or so, I will be installing a cat6 cable to this room though. Will review adding the cables back when it's redecorated in the future

wgt52 said:

Only IF you have Fibre broadband and the house is LAN cabled to all TV points from the router.

The more and more use of WiFi will cause more and more interference issues - to stop that the routers, etc get increased TX power which then becomes a self-defeating round of power increases.

And as for Power Line adapters - eventually you'll end up with similar problems.

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This is my thinking, I will be running a cat 6 cable to this room, I have used the room briefly before as an office and the WiFi reception was not great.

I will need to read up on power line adaptors as I'm not sure what this is, I am having my consumer unit upgraded next week from a self wired type to a rcbo unit, it is my intention to have lan points in all relevant rooms

CVHO said:

This is my thinking, I will be running a cat 6 cable to this room, I have used the room briefly before as an office and the WiFi reception was not great.

I will need to read up on power line adaptors as I'm not sure what this is, I am having my consumer unit upgraded next week from a self wired type to a rcbo unit, it is my intention to have lan points in all relevant rooms

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Powerline adapters are another way of getting a network connection to part of a house. A large part of the buying public wouldn't ever go to the trouble of running Ethernet cabling around the house. They take the easy route of relying on Wi-Fi. But as you've found, Wi-Fi reception can be variable. Some will use Wi-Fi range extenders at a halfway point. These are a "capture and retransmit" solution which simply plug in to an available mains socket. The catch with them is that they reduce the speed of connection because they're unpacking and repacking the data stream.

An alternative solution was invented that uses the mains cable of the house electrical sockets as a way to carry a data stream. This is powerline adapters.

They come as a pair of devices. The first plugs in to an available mains socket near the network switch/router. An Ethernet cable connects the device to the switch. The second of the pair plugs in to an available socket at the destination end. It also has an Ethernet socket. In this way a LAN connection is made using the house mains cable as the signal-carrying component instead of running CAT cabling. There are versions where the destination device includes a wireless access point (WAP) as well as an Ethernet socket.

Powerline adapters have some issues of their own though. For a start, the signal isn't guaranteed if it has to pass through the consumer unit. Using them to pass a signal from the front to the back of the house on say the ground floor mains socket circuit would work. The results might be different trying to get a signal from the downstairs sockets to the upstairs sockets which are on two separate circuits.

The bigger issues though relate to using mains cable for high frequency data signalling. Parallel conductors make lousy data cable but great aerials.

Sending a voltage down a piece of wire will create a magnetic field. Put two or more long straight signal cables close to each other in a parallel configuration and you'll have multiple magnetics fields. These will interact with each other. This is called crosstalk. The signals down each cable interact with each other and create data errors. Add these data errors to the time taken to convert date arriving on four pair Ethernet cable to- and from- something that can travel down the three conductors in some mains cable, and then add in the effects of capacitance and inductance between parallel conductors, then it becomes clear why the data speeds take a beating in powerline adapters. The data takes a hell of a beating, and that means the error correction is working harder to retransmit all the corrupted data packets.


Not only are unshielded parallel cables poor for data signalling, but they're prone to picking up and also transmitting interference signals.

The early generations of powerline adapters were particularly bad in this respect. They bled interference and caused problems for a wide range of radio reception gear. Folk complained about bad reception for DAB and FM. Standards got tightened up so that interference with other types of domestic equipment reduced a lot, but there are still some issues for users of some commercial radio systems. It's said that the emissions can travel up to 100m. If one of your close neighbours is a radio ham, or you happen to live near an emergency service base such as fire, police, ambulance or coastguard then it's said that using powerline adapters can interfere with their radio communications.

I can see the appeal from the simplicity perspective and also from a cost perspective to 'fix' bad Wi-Fi in a single room. In general though, if you can avoid using them then it's better.

Lucid said:

I can see the appeal from the simplicity perspective and also from a cost perspective to 'fix' bad Wi-Fi in a single room. In general though, if you can avoid using them then it's better.

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Yeah I think I rule those out, the cabling in my house was mainly replaced from the mid 70s onwards, cabling I have removed or altered has had a manufacture date of the 70s so I am guessing based on that. There are sections which 4/5 cables for power or lighting running next to each other in notches of floor joists etc so would have a lot of potential interference.

I am in the 'fortunate' stage that I have a alot of walls down to studs so can run services through these and replacing loft insulation atm so not too bad to run services through the loft, thank you for your very detailed posts!

CVHO said:

Yeah I think I rule those out, the cabling in my house was mainly replaced from the mid 70s onwards, cabling I have removed or altered has had a manufacture date of the 70s so I am guessing based on that. There are sections which 4/5 cables for power or lighting running next to each other in notches of floor joists etc so would have a lot of potential interference.

I am in the 'fortunate' stage that I have a alot of walls down to studs so can run services through these and replacing loft insulation atm so not too bad to run services through the loft, thank you for your very detailed posts!

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BIB - mains cables for ring mains, mains circuits and lighting circuits won't really be a problem unless you're constantly using a lot of electric motors (fridge, freezer, washer, dryer, dishwasher, AC, CH etc) or other devices that send a lot of spikes in to the mains.

The issue is when data is put down a single mains cable; lets say in a lab under test conditions with no other date or mains cables within a couple of metres.

The cable pair/triple will interfere with itself. IOW, the live and the neutral (and possibly the earth if it's carrying a high frequency signal) will radiate magnetic fields that then affect the other cables within a twin and earth cable run. The interference from the neutral will affect the data pulses travelling down the live conductor, and the live will interfere with the data travelling down the neutral wire. There's already 50Hz 240V mins travelling within a live cable, so the presence of live mains as long as it's relatively clean in close adjacent cables really isn't a problem.

I said I would never use power line adaptors, however it seems they are included want it or not with Sky Q. As to satellite be it Sky or Free to Air, it has so many more channels to Freeview there is no comparison. I use the Moel y Sant (Powys, Wales) mast which is a public service broadcasting (PSB) transmitter so 36 programs, with Free to Air there are some useless channels, so saying I have 1000's of channels may be true, but not really a true representation as I don't watch the sex, god, non English and shopping channels. And there may be 30 odd BBC channels one for each region, but I only watch BBC 1 Wales in the main, however looking at more like 360 programs than 36, OK

4Music, 4seven, 5SELECT, 5STAR, 5USA, Aljazeera English, BBC Four HD, BBC News HD, Blaze, Blaze +1, CBeebies HD, CBS Drama, CBS Justice, CBS Reality, Together TV +1, Challenge, Channel 5 +1, CITV, Dave, Dave ja vu, DMAX, Drama, E4 +1, Film4 +1, Food Network, Forces TV, FreeSports, HGTV, Horror Channel, ITV2 +1, ITV3 +1, ITV4 +1, ITVBe +1, More4 +1, NOW 80s, Paramount Network, PBS America +1, pick, Quest +1, Quest Red, Quest Red +1, Really, RT HD, Sky Arts, Sky News, Smithsonian Channel, Sony Movies Action, Talking Pictures TV, TCC, Together TV, Yesterday +1.

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are all considered as commercial (COM) channels so not part of freeview, but are available in many areas using a terrestrial aerial, however when I lived in an area where these were available, it was still rather annoying when ITV3+1 stopped broadcasting at midnight half way through a program.

So I would be asking are terrestrial aerials redundant, not satellite dishes.

jonbey said:

They are in my house, but, might be useful in future... freesat and freeview are merging, so in theory, a good antenna will provide the same service (I think?) but some people love Sky, don't they? Although is that all available over internet now?

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They are not actually merging, just linking operations.

There is no way an antenna will provide all the programmes available on Freesat. There is just not the bandwidth available.

Um.... isn't a sat dish an antenna then?

Or are you talking a load of parabolics again? lol

If there is some thing in the air, then an aerial, be it power cables, or any other, but as far as radio signals go, the aerial is passive, so I can fly a kite with an aerial attached to it, however I would not be permitted with my licence to have a transmitter or receiver on the kite with just the speaker on the ground, and the LNB which picks up the satellite signal is powered, so not considered as an aerial or antenna, I thought an antenna was the things on an insects head, so would consider a normal car aerial as an antenna, but where horizontal I would not call it an antenna.

On my to do list is LAN cables, these I hope will stop breaks in transmission for the Sky Q? From what I am lead to believe Sky Q remote boxes use a mixture of wifi and powerline, since my consumer unit has SPD fitted and the ring finals are split front/back/upper/lower each with its own RCBO there is a problem with powerline. And house really too big for all wifi using one router, so it does not really matter if LAN cables or coax cables, end of day, need cables.