what to do freesat

[russellsmiler]

Hopefully I can glean some help here, it just seems everywhere else i ask i get bombarded with sales pitches.
To keep it dead simple (and hopefully it is)

My elderly mother who lives in mid wales as had a "pipeline" service for TV that is to be discontinued.

There are 4 tv points 2 up 2 down in the small house. I aim to put a dish up and run a single wf100 from dish position to each point required in house.

at each point we will eventually have a freesat box of varying specification.

Questions asked here are
1. does this seem ok in principle
2. 1 wf 100 to each point or will i need "shotgun" 2 wf100 to each point
3. What dish, how many LNBs
4. Any simple advice offered is greatly welcomed.

My aim is to do all the infrastructure (run cables, fix dish on wall) and then have ends made and dish aligned by installer.
thanks all for any constructive advice given.

 

[omega015]

Few things to clarify first is what freesat box do you plan on putting in? Will it just be your mother or are there other people who will be watching? Will they want to record, pause etc..? If I was going to the effort to put up a new dish, lnb, cables etc... I would probably go for a Quattro lnb with a distribution box in the loft but this might be slightly overkill for this situation unless you plan on recording/pause functions etc.. in one or more rooms.

 

[russellsmiler]

Hi Omega
with regards to freesat boxes, we plan to have a box for recording and pausing in the living room, and the other three rooms as basic as possible.

would like to steer away from distribution boxes if possible.
I am not that savvy with any of this.
again thank you for your help.

 

[OwainDIYer]

If you want to record and watch simultaneously at a location you'll need a twin feed to that room. A standard quad (4 output) LNB will therefore do lounge and 2 bedrooms. Any more than that and you'll need either a multiswitch or an octo LNB
http://www.satcure.co.uk/accs/page1a.htm#octo

 

[Lucid]

As mentioned above, a Quad LNB (4 x outputs) isn't enough to feed a full-on "record one channel while watching another" Freesat recorder box and 3 other basic view only boxes. While technically possible to survive with a single input to a recorder, sooner or later there'll be a channel clash and something will fail to record. It's best then to think of decent Freesat recorders as needing two inputs. That means your 3x basic + 1x recorder requires a total of 5 cables down from the LNB.

The octo (8 output LNB) comes to the rescue. As you've probably worked out, this one has eight individually addressable outputs. You can mix and match any way you please up to 4 full-on recorders, or 8 single basic boxes, or some combination between.

WF100 is great cable. Definitely recommended unless you're running daft distances. The shotgun version is just the same.

I know you only plan on running single input boxes in some rooms, therefore only running single cable to them, but it's just about as easy to run twin as single, and you never know what might happen in the future. Have a think about getting a reel of twin WF100 and using that everywhere even though you'll only be using one.



Did we help? If so, click on the THANKS button. It's free - costs you nothing - and is the best way to thanks someone for taking the time to help you with your question. You can do it on more than one post in a thread too. Be generous.... say Thanks with a click

 

[Doggit]

Shotgun cable is a neat way of getting 2 feeds to a box, but if you're ever going to change the useage in the rooms, then putting in shotgun cable, would solve any potential future problem You can get 4 feeds from a standard sky sized dish, but if you have to go for an octo LNB, then you'll need to install a bigger dish.

I don't know whether this idea will work, but if you're not going to use 2 rooms at the same time, I wonder if a signal amp would work to split one cable into two rooms, and that would allow you to stay with a standard sized dish.

 

[OwainDIYer]

I don't know whether this idea will work, but if you're not going to use 2 rooms at the same time, I wonder if a signal amp would work to split one cable into two rooms, and that would allow you to stay with a standard sized dish.

A straighforward splitter won't work on satellite, as only one receiver will be able to control the LNB at any time for high/low vertical/horizontal polarisation. (in very simple terms only 1/4 of the channels will be available at any time, which 1/4 will depend on what the receivers are asking for). To be able to choose from the full channel selection each receiver (or tuner in a twin-tuner receiver) needs its own cable from the LNB (or from a multiswitch)

 

[Doggit]

A straighforward splitter won't work on satellite, as only one receiver will be able to control the LNB at any time

That's why I asked if both rooms would be used at the same time. I have no real idea if it will work, but I thought I'd throw it out for discussion.

 

[Lucid]

Each solution has its pros and cons. From experience of other customers who tried to do things on the cheap, I can say that they found anything involving cable/box swapping or splitting the sat feed turned out to be a tedious choice. This sort of thing is best avoided.

The bigger dish with the octo LNB keeps things simple. The quattro LNB + multi-switch is technically a better and more flexible solution but more costly too, and in this case I think overkill given that the reason (I presume) satellite is being used is because the Freeview signal sucks. If it was me making the choice then the octo + bigger dish wins based on the information supplied so far.

 

[russellsmiler]

Hi
Thank you all, for advice, I feel i understand the situation much clearer now and pretty know how i will proceed, again thanks.

 

[ericmark]

I have about 8 satellite boxes, each one is different, some do have an output to another box but it only works if using the same multiplex so in real terms useless. The Sky+ box has two receivers so two feeds, but rest single satellite feed, one also has a freeview tuner as well. But the big difference in with the EPG (electronic program guide) with Sky it works A1, but every other TV and satellite box has issues some worse than others.

The IceCrypt is best of the bad bunch, often you have to select the channel before the EPG works, and trying to look ahead it can take ages for the guide to catch up, going one or two days advance is about the limit. When the EPG works recording (with external hard drive) is easy, simply click on program to be recorded, although one can manually enter channel and time doing it that way is not so easy.

The receiving of both freeview and satellite is A1, it does it well, but it's the EPG which lets it down, some of our boxes will only do now and next so not the worst, but when you buy you don't think about the EPG, in some ways better with the very old Sky box, no HD but at least the EPG works for a week in advance.

As a PS the internet with IceCrypt is near non existent, weather is only thing we got to work, but we can watch pre-recorded films with the USB input, it says FAT32 but we use a 2 TB drive which is not FAT32 without a problem. Programs recorded with the box are listed by number and channel and name although latter is often preceding program, very easy to view, but fast forward not too good, always seem to miss stop point.

I understand the IceCrypt is a free to air box and some boxes are called Freesat, I think Freesat has better EPG but don't have one so not sure.

 

[OwainDIYer]

I think Freesat has better channel numbering and EPG than Freeview, but of course it depends on which box/telly you get how it's actually displayed.