Sky Q/co ax and magic eye

[Dave123456789]

hi there

I have sky plus hd and via co ax cables and magic eye whatever comes on in living room (main box) comes on it dining room and bedroom due to cables already under floorboard and run outside house

I am contemplating Sky q but know it won’t come with the relevant ports at the back to have this same setup

Without paying for 2 extra boxes (I know it’s only £12 a month for multi screen now) is there a way to still use my co ax cables?

Is there a hdmi to co ax converter perhaps?

Appreciate signal won’t be great but I don’t have great TV sets in other rooms Tbf!

 

[flameport]

Most things can be converted to most others for a price, HDMI to RF analog coax is certainly possible, as is HDMI to DVB-T.

However the entire point of SkyQ is to have 4K output, and to have multiple boxes with one for each television.
If you don't want those things, keep what you have already got.

 

[Lucid]

To get 4K out of Sky Q requires the top-of-the-range 2TB box and a Sky Multi-screen subscription (£12/month) on top of the regular Sky subs. Even then, the true 4K resolution content is only accessible with the 4K Sports channel (yet another subscription) or with downloaded content through the Sky Cinema and Sky Box Sets add-on subscriptions.

The Sky Q box can be set to scale up regular SD and HD channels to 4K resolution, but any 4K TV already does the same scaling trick with an SD or HD signal anyway, so there's no advantage in having the Sky box do that unless you're already paying for the 4K subs. Apart then from the extra tuners that support additional channel recording and live streaming to a couple of mobiles/tablets, is there enough in a stand-alone Sky Q box to justify the change from Sky+HD?

As for converting signals to use coax; yes, that's possible right now in full HD1080p quality and directly applicable to Sky+HD, and to Sky Q with some caveats. The device you need is a Technomate TM-RF HD IR Pass 1080p HDMI RF Modulator.

Here's a quick breakdown of what's possible and how it works.

The box converts a HDMI signal at anything from SD to Full HD quality in to the equivalent of a Freeview HD channel. In practise then, where you currently switch to the analogue TV tuner, with the Technomate you'd stay on the Digital TV tuner and set up an unused channel to tune in to the Sky box. Just like Sky's RF2 out can be adjusted so that the output channel/frequency doesn't clash with any existing digital channels, the Technomate has the same ability.

The signal from the Technomate looks like a HD channel mux to each TV's tuner. This means that each TV must have a HD Freeview tuner to get the signal. As long as the TVs can pick up Freeview HD channels then you're golden, and any Sky HD channels will come through to the remote TVs in the same quality as if you had really long HDMI cables connecting them to the Sky box.

Hook-up is fairly simple. The Technomate has HDMI in and HDMI Out sockets. Connect HDMI from the Sky box to the Technomate, then another from the Technomate to the main lounge TV. There's also an aerial coax pass through, so just like RF In / RF Out on the Sky box, you loop the aerial signal through the Technomate so that the remote TVs get Freeview as well as the Sky box signal. It's also possible to keep the existing Sky eyes and use them with Sky+HD RF2 for control, or with an external IR emitter to change channels on boxes that don't support magic eyes directly such as the Q box, Virgin TiVo, BT YouView etc.

That covers the basics of the "can do" bits. There are some "can't do" things you need to know about.

The main one is 4K UHD signal compatibility. In a nutshell, there isn't any; not at the £150 price mark. Where the signal going in to the HDMI socket is at a higher resolution than 1080p then the Technomate and equivalent modulators won't recognise it.

The other main one is that this isn't plug 'n' play technology. Whilst it's simple enough to hook up, you still have to have your wits about when it comes to doing a manual Freeview tune in to get the extra digital channel.


It's worth mentioning the slightly cheaper Edision modulator. It's roughly £10 less, but there's a catch. It doesn't have a HDMI loop-thru. That means you'll spend extra on an additional HDMI splitter which will need its own mains socket too. The Technomate works out a better option for most folks.

If you do go Sky Q multi-screen then those extra player boxes are limited to 1080i/1080p max. Sky has no plans to make a 4K UHD version of the mini boxes, and their domestic system won't support more than one main recorder box.

 

[alan333]

I have sky plus hd and via co ax cables and magic eye whatever comes on in living room (main box) comes on it dining room and bedroom due to cables already under floorboard and run outside house

I am contemplating Sky q but know it won’t come with the relevant ports at the back to have this same setup

Without paying for 2 extra boxes (I know it’s only £12 a month for multi screen now) is there a way to still use my co ax cables?

Is there a hdmi to co ax converter perhaps?

Appreciate signal won’t be great but I don’t have great TV sets in other rooms Tbf!

I contemplated similar recently with our Sky Plus HD box. We have a 20 years old coax cable which was originally the aerial feed from the loft, which I now use as the RF2 out feed to the loft. There's a 4 way booster/splitter connected in the loft, and it feeds an additional 3 tv's. The two upstairs have great quality but the one downstairs has lost a bit. All three have magic eyes.
We decided that the only advantage of Sky Q is recording multiple programmes, which we can always work around anyway by recording on +1 or on catch up etc.
We decided to keep Sky+, and if the box broke (it's 8 years old now) we'd either take it for repair or buy another one on ebay or something. We don't use HD so our planner is big enough but if you're struggling for recording space I believe a larger hard drive can also be fitted.

 

[Dave123456789]

@Lucid thanks so much for that brilliant advice! unfortunately the tv's I have are rather old - 2009....so they dont have freeview HD. only normal freeview! so i might be better off staying put for now. sky Q will only come down in install costs over time

@alan333 - sounds like a neat setup mate. but how comes your booster/splitter is in the lift? should this not be by the actual sky box? and then run wires to the various rooms ??

 

[Lucid]

Sky will play with the install price when they choose to do a bit of a push on Q. Equally though, keeping it high does give them a negotiating tool. Persuading existing +HD subscribers to make the switch by offering them cheaper or free install is a smart tactic. Sky know they'll get it back in the higher subscription rates for basic and intermediary package subscribers.

The aerial amp/splitter in the loft makes wiring neater and makes sense from a technical point of view for basic aerial installs as the path from the aerial to the amp is shortest this way. That way of doing things has stuck as people started to use RF2 out. The Sky box amplifies its RF2 out which helps offset the losses from the longer single cable runs.

 

[alan333]

[USER=192673]@alan333 - how comes your booster/splitter is in the loft? should this not be by the actual sky box? and then run wires to the various rooms ??[/USER]

[COLOR=#000000]I only have the one coax cable behind the wall from the lounge tv, and it ends in the loft, hence fitting the splitter there. It's fairly easy to drop cables from there to the upstairs bedrooms, and the previous house owner had already fed a coax cable from the loft aerial to the downstairs kitchen. It seemed the easy way out.[/COLOR]