Aerial distribution box location

[andywhy]

Hello

I am after advice on the best place to locate the distribution box to supply the lounge, kitchen/diner/lounge and bedrooms. It's a 3 storey semi plus cellar.

I am presuming that the shorter the distance from the roof aerial to the distribution box would be best in terms of performance. This would mean locating the box in the attic room. I have made provision for this already with a power supply in a cupboard.

However, logistically it would be easy to take the existing feed into the lounge (straight into the telly) and reroute into the cellar and distribute from there. Reception currently in the lounge is absolutely fine, and good signal is most important on the ground floor as that's where most TV will be watched.


P.S. house is being renovated so can route cables
Just after your thoughts really and maybe a little assurance on what I have in my mind to do

Thanks in advance

Andy & lou

 

[SimonH2]

Well there's an element of "put it where you can get cable to/from it" !

But, from a consideration of signal quality then the splitter (amplifier ?) should be fairly close to the aerial. You should also try and minimise the length of both individual cables and the overall cable length from aerial to socket.

The very last thing you should do is run a long cable to somewhere, and then insert an amplifier to compensate for the lost signal. Along this cable the signal will also have gained noise - so an amplifier at the downstream end would amplify the noise as well.

Lastly, always use good quality coax. That means one with a complete copper foil screen, not the cheap stuff (Low Loss Coax) that I wouldn't use to hang the washing on.

A couple of links for you :
http://www.aerialsandtv.com/ampsandsplitters.html
http://www.aerialsandtv.com/cableandleads.html#LowLossCoAx

 

[Chri5]

With digital signal from a newer aerial there isn't too much issue with cable distance if you use a good solid foam co ax.

Thing is you may have an amp that takes other signals such as sky, cable, media server or even a humble DVD.

I'd go with an aerial feed from roof to basement, which makes any other feed in easier and then star wire / distribute from basement to all rooms requiring feeds.

 

[SimonH2]

With digital signal from a newer aerial there isn't too much issue with cable distance if you use a good solid foam co ax.

I'd disagree there. Cable distance makes as much difference to digital signals as it does to analogue. The effects on the signal are different, and the results from poor signal and interference are different, but some combination of long runs/poor quality cable/poor aerial/low signal strength can combine to cause problems.

On analogue you tend to start getting a bit of "snow" on the picture, and it gets steadily worse as signal decreases and/or noise increases. On digital you will get some annoying freezes which get rapidly worse to the point of unwatchable. I know this first hand* Unless you start adding attenuators, then you have no idea if you have a "barely adequate" signal or a "good signal".

But if you do have a good aerial, and/or a strong signal, and use good quality cable - then cable distance in a normal sized house isn't likely to be a problem. The key is to stack the odds in your favour by eliminating/reducing as much as you are able any/all of long runs/poor quality cable/poor aerial/low signal strength


* I'm up in Granada land, and a good distance from Winter Hill so we get a fairly weak signal. In the lead up to digital switchover, we got the digital muxes at vastly reduced power, and the mux carrying C5 was even lower power. Add in some old cable in the house, and an aerial past it's best and we got to the point where C5 would disappear at times. Particularly in summer, you could be watching it, and see the stuttering begin around an hour before sunset, getting steadily worse until there was nothing left, C5 on analogue would also get worse until it too disappeared, and then it would all reverse after sunset until everything was back to normal after a couple of hours.
We now have a new aerial (high gain, and mounted in a different location, new cabling, and of course - more powerful transmissions after digital switchover. On some sets I now need an attenuator which is good - you can always throw signal away if you've too much

 

[Chri5]

In London new aerial plus solid foam (in other words decent co-ax) in very ok, have had to use adjustable attentuators to take some of the signal away.

Thing is that should the op be looking at other feeds in to the amp ypu have to start looking at the best design that allows input to the amp from all source items required.

OP if in doubt, throw a cable from the aerial down the outside of the building add 5m to cover diverse internal route and test it. If ok use the basement, one cable down is much easier than 3 tv points and a few input source items at grd level having to be routed to the loft.