NTL/General Cable TV Question

[aidan1979]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask the following but here it goes, any advice is appreciated ...

I ordered NTL cable installation the other day and asked the lady who was arranging it all what we had to do to be able to watch and change channels on more than one TV (i.e. digital TV channels). I asked her how much more that would be etc.

Her reply was that she had it at home and that, although she should not be saying it, what we should do is "get hold of another digibox" (she said she couldn't tell us how or where but we presumed Ebay) and run it off the main one in the lounge. Like that we would have 2 digiboxes (one in the lounge and one in the bedroom) and so we could watch digital tv and change channels in each room without it affecting the other. She told us it was not necessary and not worth doing it directly through the Cable Providers as they charge a fair bit more for this service.

It all sounded like a good idea at the time but then i thought that it can't possible be that easy to "set up". I was therefoe wondering whether anyone had any experience of doing this and whether (a) it can be done; and (b) whether its something that can be done by the uninitiated or whether it is actually very difficult to do. If so, how do you do it and out of interest, how does it all work (in English please!!!).

 

[Steve]

i presume it is a matter of splitting the co-axial cable where it comes out of the wall-box, and leading it to a second box, but i dont know where you stand on having a second subscription? Did she mention this?

 

[fattony]

Get the lowest tv package from NTL and buy yourself a 'Eurovox' (ebay) it decodes all the channels, so you basically pay £4.99 a month and have sky's full package

 

[aidan1979]

No she didn't. I was asking precisely about paying more money (presumably for a second subscription) as I have a friend who has something to that effect with Sky and he only pays an extra £10 a month i think. The way she put it though was that it was a lot of money and that it wasn't worth paying it as you could do it in the "way" I explained above. The impression I got is that you must run another cable (fibre optic or coaxial?) from the box on the internal wall that NTL installs (say in your living room) to your bedroom and that this cable then connects to another "wall" box. It is from these "wall" boxes that you connect the digibox - I can't imagine how else it could be done from within the house but I don't understand how it works. I can only think that it works in a similar way to a telephone where you have the main line coming into the house and then secondary boxes throughout the house running off this.

Can this be done with digital?

 

[aidan1979]

Hi fattony ... how does that box work? Does it need a "cracked" card of sorts? I've quickly skimmed a few of the sellers pages in ebay but none of them say (in any way) that this allows you see every single Sky channel with a basic package. Does the box need to be chipped in any way? Is there any chance (as with cracked Sky cards in the past) that NTL can do something so that the box cannot unblock the channels?

 

[fattony]

They wont commit to saying you have the full sky package just that you get 200 + channels, the box is already chipped you just remove the digi box telewsest left you and fit the Eurovox in its place. I don't get the poker channel and maybe a couple others, but got discovery, living, bravo, gold, history etc movies 1-10 sky sport 1-3 all porn channels and prem plus. All for £4.99 a month

 

[stuartinlancashire]

They wont commit to saying you have the full sky package just that you get 200 + channels, the box is already chipped you just remove the digi box telewsest left you and fit the Eurovox in its place. I don't get the poker channel and maybe a couple others, but got discovery, living, bravo, gold, history etc movies 1-10 sky sport 1-3 all p**n channels and prem plus. All for £4.99 a month

I am suprised NTL have not got wise to this as technically it is fraud.

 

[simon_d]

you can get pre-chipped boxes for telewest/ntl easily. probably no ebay, but there still around. providing you have a cable coming into your house from telewest/ntl, you just plug and go. if you have the net, etc, just split the incoming line and take 1 to the cable and 1 to the TV. and your done.

 

[aidan1979]

Do do you suggest just subscribing for Broad band and telephone, then just splitting the cable from the broadband box on the wall to the sitting room for tv? If so, could I also split it to have a second tv with its owm box in the bedroom?

One other question, does the Eurovox not need an NTL card to work?

 

[fattony]

nope there are no cards with ntl which is why they cant trace it, not sure about splitting the signal

 

[simon_d]

Do do you suggest just subscribing for Broad band and telephone, then just splitting the cable from the broadband box on the wall to the sitting room for tv? If so, could I also split it to have a second tv with its owm box in the bedroom?

One other question, does the Eurovox not need an NTL card to work?

anything to get the cable line into your house. chipped boxes dont have a card... (or at least some dont). ths signal can be split and take to different points (in my house, it was split to 3 places - 2 TV's (legal tho) and a modem. never had any problems and thats how the engineer intalled it

nope there are no cards with ntl which is why they cant trace it, not sure about splitting the signal

the signal can be split.

 

[Adam_151]

nope there are no cards with ntl which is why they cant trace it, not sure about splitting the signal

My NTL STB certainly has a card in it (happens to be brown and crispy due to the heat of the box... *grumble grumble* bloody fire risk*grumble grumble*)