Wiring a new house (Sky/freeview)

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NewKiwi2

1 post

Wannabe Geek

#235946 11-May-2018 00:43

I'm new to NZ and building a new house and I'm getting a lot of different advice on what I should do.

I would like to see a wiring diagram of how I should wire my house.

I have a SKY HDI with HD subscription and 3 TV's

Sky decoder is connected to my AV receiver so the main TV is only a "monitor"

Requirements as below:

View sky on any/all TV's (Main room has decoder and remote, no need to change channels in the other rooms)

View freeview on the other 2 TV's

The electrical contractor has wired the following.

2 x RG6 from roof to DB box

2 x RG6 from DB to each TV

Thanks

sbiddle

30853 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

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Biddle Corp

Lifetime subscriber

#2013725 11-May-2018 07:37

What is your budget? What will determine how you do things.

I assume you also have cat6 data outlets at each location? If not the simplest option is not possible.

You have two options -

DVB-T encoder feeding the HDMI output from the Sky box into a splitter and sending it around to each TV where you'll tune it as a digital channel. Depending on the hardware the budget is around $500 - $700 for this.

HDMI splitter and HDMI baluns at each location running over the cat6 data cable to each TV where you will watch Sky on a HDMI input on the TV. Budget around the same for this, but much cheaper baluns are available that could cut this cost to probably $300 but you have no guarantee as to the quality.

You'll notice I didn't include the cheapest approach as an option, because I no longer consider it a serious option these days. A $30 RF modulator will allow you to feed the picture from the Sky box and allow you to tune it as an analogue channel on each TV. This delivers the worst possible picture option that is a) analogue, b) not HD and c) no IR support to change channels and d) incredibly poor picture quality.

Quinny

885 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#2015985 14-May-2018 18:56

sbiddle:

You'll notice I didn't include the cheapest approach as an option, because I no longer consider it a serious option these days. A $30 RF modulator will allow you to feed the picture from the Sky box and allow you to tune it as an analogue channel on each TV. This delivers the worst possible picture option that is a) analogue, b) not HD and c) no IR support to change channels and d) incredibly poor picture quality.

I actually went with this option and its not that bad. When house was built 4-5 years ago the HDMI option was several $thousand and I could not do it. On a 42 inch tv from normal distance the picture is fine. If I push to a 65 inch then yeah notice it. But my Sony OELD has option to tidy crap signal and does an amazing job (watched Nascar all day yesterday and was forgot it was backfeed analog). I also at the same time ran 2x hdmi from A to B and C to D so that I could use the Sky HDMI out from each box for a nice HD image. I have had some issues with these (sound drops, interference when added chromecast wfi adapters) but don't dismiss a Analog backfeed out of hand. It can do the job fine at low cost.