Splitting outdoor aerial to bedroom

[Sprogginz]

I'm going to hook up a TV in my parent's bedroom with an outdoor aerial because an internal one just doesn't work reliably.

Currently there is redundant shotgun cable coming through the wall that is still connected to the Sky dish (in use for the living room).

My initial plan is to pull out this cable and replace it with a normal TV coaxial cable connected to an outside splitter from the aerial on the roof.

My first question is would it be better to run the cable directly from the splitter to the TV without installing a wall socket instead? Obviously it would be neater with one but I'm worried it that the signal would degrade using something like this especially when I'm already splitting it?

The second question which is just a thought, can I use a cheap receiver for this shotgun cable connected to the Sky dish instead? They just want the standard channels and don't want to add to their Sky subscription.

Thanks very much.

 

[Lucid]

There'll always be some signal loss when a joint or other piece of hardware is added to an aerial system. Having said that, the signal loss through a wall socket isn't that great. With a decent quality wall plate you'll lose about 2-2.5dB. In the grand scheme of things a 2.5dB loss shouldn't be enough to cause any issues so long as the rest of the aerial system is up to the job. To put it another way, if putting the plate in did cause problems then that's showing you there are bigger issues to deal with elsewhere.

There's a good primer about what to look for and what to avoid here: http://www.satcure.co.uk/tech/wall_plates.htm#avoid They also sell decent gear by mail order so you can take the risk out of ordering on-line.

As for your other questions; yes, you could stick with the satellite dish signal and install a Freesat receiver rather than going for Freeview. The channel range comparing Freesat with Freeview is pretty much the same. Depending on the quality and features of the Freesat box you buy you could end up with something that works in a similar way to Sky: Pause live TV, record up to two channels at once. There's usually nothing required to do with the dish; just move the cables over to the new box. The only downsides are the cost of a Freesat receiver compared to a TV which needs nothing more than a decent aerial signal to get a picture, and that one Freesat receiver is required for each TV if you don't already have a working aerial.

Personally I'd go with Freeview by splitting the aerial. Every modern telly has an aerial socket and is equipped with a Freeview tuner. If you want to record then a Freeview box will probably be a little cheaper too.

 

[Sprogginz]

Thank you very much for your post Lucid, gave me everything I need to know.

Tempting with a Freesat box for the recording, pause etc. Trouble is I don't think my mum will use it no matter how many times I show her!

With limited time now, I ended up (as you suggested as well) just installing the outdoor splitter box and fed the cable directly to the back of the TV. Both TVs seems to have good signal.

Thanks again, very much appreciated.