You can't make the wiring for AV completely future-proof. It's impossible; a fool's errand. Standards change and systems evolve.
The best any of us can hope to do is cover the bases of what you can reasonably foresee your own use being within the next 3-5 years, and once that's done, then also make provision for some easier way to change the wiring to cope with whatever new standards might pop up.
Covering the common bases:
Freeview/digital terrestrial TV - good quality all-copper 75 Ohm coax cable such as Webro WF100, Labgear PF100, Triax TX100, Nexans NX100. Cable to avoid: anything just labelled 'RG6' or 'low loss coax' or that has silver looking -foil and/or -braid shielding. It's cheaper, but a false economy in most cases.
Wire from an outdoor aerial mounted as high up as possible to a central distribution point. Where that central distribution point is depends on whether the distribution gear is passive (a simple multi-way unpowered splitter) or actively amplified. It may also affect the location of the central point if you're trying to bring together both aerial and satellite distribution in one.
Unpowered splitters need to be located as close to a mid point between all the TVs as possible; so you have a long cable from the aerial, and then shorter cables to each TV. This retains the benefits of the higher signal strength direct from the aerial for the majority of the cable run, and it reduces the length of cable that the reduced signal after splitting has to run.
For powered splitters, the opposite is the case: Short cable from the aerial, long cables to each TV point. The short cable gives the amp the best quality signal from the aerial. The long cables to the TV point use the amplifier's signal boost to offset the transmission losses down the longer cables.
Satellite - Sky -
If you're a new subscriber to Sky, or you're adding Sky to a property where you haven't had it before, then Sky will rent to you their SkyQ system.
Sky Q uses a main box as the entire system recorder. Whether you have just the one box, or the main box plus several of the SkyQ Mini boxes for Q in multiple rooms, they all draw their signal from the main box. The advantage here is that it does away with additional satellite cables to each of the secondary rooms. The Mini boxes get their signals via a network connection. This could be Wireless or via Ethernet or via Powerline connections. There are pros and cons with each.
The outside of the house still needs a Sky satellite dish. (There is talk of Sky via broadband, but at the moment the UK hardware doesn't support this so it's only available in some European countries where Q was rolled out much later with newer hardware.)
The dish on a wall feeds two cables to the main box location, and that's it. There are no other dish cable feeds to any other boxes. In general, for a property that hasn't had it before, Sky will install the dish and run the cabling to the main box location.
Satellite - Freesat
Satellite doesn't have to be just Sky, but their subscription packages do offer a bigger choice of content than Freeview or Freesat alone. Another way of making use of Satellite is the competitor system to Freeview. It's called Freesat.
LG makes TVs with sockets for an aerial connection (Freeview) and a Satellite connection (Freesat). It's possible to swap between the two systems. Humax and other PVR box manufacturers make Freesat receivers and recorders.
Unlike SkyQ, Freesat requires at least one satellite feed per room where a receiver box or Freesat-enabled TV might live. Freesat recorders require two feeds to each box if the watch-live-while-recording-another-channel feature is to be used to its maximum benefit.
Here are some important differences between Freeview, Freesat and SkyQ
* With Freeview, a single aerial feed can be split and distributed to lots of TVs and recorders. The signal can also be looped through a recorder and in to a TV; so in essence, one aerial feed in to the room could serve a 2/3/4-channel recorder and then go on to supply the TV with signal without any issues. The same is not true of a basic Freesat signal
* Freesat requires one satellite dish signal feed per tuner. For example, a room with a Freesat enabled TV and a twin channel Freesat recorder would need 3x signal cables if all the facilities are to be used without clashes
* Freesat signals cannot be looped through one device to then feed another without running in to problems of channel clashes, lost signal and missed recordings. Similarly, Freesat signals cannot be split to serve two or more tuners in a room. One cable per tuner is the golden rule
* The older Sky+/Sky+HD satellite dish installations used an LNB on the dish arm that was compatible with Freesat boxes. The same signal would work for Freesat as well as Sky+HD without any changes to the dish, its alignment or the wiring
* A standard SkyQ dish LNB signal is not directly compatible with Freesat recorders. It is possible to request something called a hybrid LNB. This has multiple outpus, so for SkyQ, and others for Sky+/Sky+HD legacy gear. The legacy outputs are compatible with Freesat recorders
[NOTE: This list isn't exhaustive.]
Pulling this all together -
So far, we've treated Freeview and Freesat as separate systems. Freeview is easy to understand. To recap: One aerial feed in to some form of splitter feeds the entire house. The signal can be looped through devices to feed several tuners at the same time.
Freesat requires one signal cable per tuner. This is normally indicated by the number of satellite screw-on connectors on the devices requiring signals, a TV having just one, and a twin tuner PVR having two.
Traditionally, a satellite dish with a 4-output LNB (Quad LNB) could feed for tuners. Changing the LNB to an 8-output version (Octo LNB) would feed eight tuners. That's a lot of cable, and there is a more elegant solution, so we'll now talk about Multiswitches.
A multiswitch is a distribution amplifier with a special trick up its sleeve. It can distribute satellite signals. That's because the common multiswitch is used with a different type of LNB called a Quattro. This LNB feeds all four phases of the satellite LNB signal to the switch, and then the switch acting a bit like an old style telephone switchboard operator in making sure that the tuners get the correct phase for whichever channel needs to be shown or recorded.
A standard multiswitch then has four inputs for the 4 phases of the satellite signals, and one input for a TV aerial feed. Each output from the multiswitch carries the TV signal plus any of the four phases of satellite as requested by the tuner. Satellite and TV signals operate at different frequencies so they won't interfere with each other.
You still need one signal cable per satellite tuner from the mutliswitch to your rooms, but the practical limit of how many satellite receiving tuners a system can support is effectively removed. Multiswitches and the additional amplifiers are available to cater for the largest hotels with hundreds of bedrooms, so it's unlikely you'll hit the limit in a standard domestic property.
Wireless may well be easy, and convenient, and mess-free, and promise great speeds, but a lot of this relies on good or even perfect conditions to deliver on all the promises. Some of it, such as BT's claims for the speeds of their wireless router (Home Hub etc, conveniently forget to mention that they turn off support for slower devices, and so the theoretical maximums they claim may not apply to everything you want to run.
(continued in pt 2)
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