Sky cables wirelessly

[stuartadair]

Hello all,

I've got 2 aerial cables coming into one side of my living room from my Sky dish. The problem is that the TV is on the other side of the room and the cables are routed over a doorway and around a fireplace which looks terrible.
Is there 'clever box' where I could plug the incoming cables in on one side of the living room and have a receiver going into my Sky box on the other ? The distance is 9m.

Thanks

Stu

 

[Mikefromlondon]

No mate, the clever box is your Sky receiver, it needs to be wired to the dish as it is what supplies the power to the dish (LNBs) and also directly controls which channels to select, channels are selected by the LNB by commands or signals sent directly by the receiver.

And if you are thinking of using a video sender mounted at the receiver end to send wireless signals to the TV, forget it, you won't get a good HD signal, and will be prone to drop out and noise.

Why not re route sky dish cables over the skirting and under the carpet protected along the part where the door is.

 

[alan333]

Or re-route the cable outside and drill a new hole through your lounge wall where you want it.

 

[Sam Gangee]

^^^^^^
I agree. Replace the aerial cables with proper satellite cable. Run it round the wall and drill through where you need the connections. WF100 is available in 6 colours but you should paint it anyway to protect it from the sun and rain. WF65 is thinner and more discrete but is unsuitable for a long run (20m is about the sensible limit before signal loss becomes a problem - 40m for WF100).
See http://www.satcure.co.uk/tech/cable.htm

 

[Mikefromlondon]

If he lives in a mid terraced house, he won't be able to wire it to the outside, and so another solution would be to have the box fitted where it is, and use a long HDM! cable you can get on ebay for about £20- £30 in 15m lengths or even longer and there are some active cables as well for better signal, so this way he will only have one single cable to run as opposed to twin LNB double cable. The only snag is pointing the remote control towards the receiver away from telly, but there are some devices that work your Sky box from a remote location, I think one is called magic eye, but I think they work through RF cable rather than through HDMI

Some installers would run the wire over the roof and fetch it to the other side, e.g. in houses where the lounge faces North and the dish can only be installed in their rear part of the house facing south.

However, you could look into something like this http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Nikkai-hq...ead478&pid=100009&rk=2&rkt=10&sd=182007081801

 

[Lucid]

I've faced the same problem on a few installs. Over the roof or around the outside wall or lifting the floor has generally been the best solution. This won't always be the easy answer, but unless the rooms are thickly carpeted and the householder is happy with a bit of cable showing where it goes through the skirting to the next room then really these are the best solutions.

Running WF100 or WF65 in sight around the contours of a room just ends up looking like a dogs breakfast and risks kinking the cable which then knackers up certain frequencies. Those TV extension kits sold by Argos/Maplin/DIY stores are thinner and more flexible, but that's because the cable is crap. It's crap for just TV so even crappier for satellite; the signal level and quality will fall through the floor if you use them. There's always CAT5/CAT6 Baluns with integrated IR Repeater as an alternative to a long HDMI cable. You still have to be careful not to kink the cable, and to get the full benefit of the smaller diameter holes then you'll need to learn how to fit your own plugs. The learning curve is steep, and if you don't have the tools (decent ratchet crimp tool, cable tester, sharp fine cutters) then just gearing up can be expensive. There's also the minefield of which cable to buy. There's a lot of really crappy cable sold on the web and by wholesalers because they don't know or don't care that they're selling rubbish such as Copper Coated Aluminium (CCA) rathere than pure copper CAT cable.

Things will change when Sky Q becomes available, but instead of paying an installer a one-off fee to do something bespoke and neat in your home you'll end up paying a whopping fee to Murdoch for a bit of convenience, and pay again and again and again...

 

[Mikefromlondon]

Talking of CCT, I bought a lawn mover Flymo from B&Q, and within 9 months packed up, I am one of those who would consider that taking it back to B&Q and queing up on a customer services counter and then only to be told that you need to take it to one of their nominated repair dealer! so all that hassle, what can go wrong it didn't go up in smoke, it just stopped, so I took it apart to see what it might be causing the problem, can't be much more than a bad connection somewhere,so checked fuse and continuity of the motor, it was open circuit, so took the motor out, and I could see that one of the CCA enamelled wire had snapped from its IDT style terminal, and I tried soldering it but it wouldn't, so as I scraped off some more enamel, instead of seeing copper I was seeing silver looking wire, and realised it was aluminium conductor, so in the end I was not going to buy expensive aluminium solder, I simply wrapped some copper wire around it and crimped it in a normal 1.5 dia sleeve and soldered the wire copper to the post, got my mover back working, it would have taken me more time to take it to a the repairers and cost two trips and a few phone calls.

Copper is becoming scarce and expensive, so aluminium is now replacing copper, sad really. Aluminium is brittle than copper so snaps due to vibration on a motor,
should never be used on motors and for that matter on any other appliances, But I think they use aluminium on HV cables on pylons due to its light weight, but reinforce it with a steel wire.

 

[Sam Gangee]

Talking of CCT, I bought a lawn mover Flymo from B&Q, and within 9 months packed up, I am one of those who would consider that taking it back to B&Q and queing up on a customer services counter and then only to be told that you need to take it to one of their nominated repair dealer!

Under English law the onus is placed squarely on the actual seller, within the first 6 months, to replace, repair or refund. They must do so "within a reasonable time" (which is generally seen as 3 weeks max.) They have no right to tell you to take or send it elsewhere. The buck stops with the seller. If they try to tell you otherwise, ask to speak to the manager. If he sticks to the same story, tell him that you'll check with Trading Standards. He will then back down.

Copper is becoming scarce and expensive

Not quite true. Supply is currently meeting demand. It will NOT continue to do so for much longer because mines are running out and significant new finds are not being made. So it WILL become scarce in the future. The price peaked in 2012 and has been falling ever since - although it's still twice the price it was in the heady days before 2005.
http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/copper/all/

 

[Mikefromlondon]

Thanks sam for that information, next time I will insist they take in faulty goods and have them repaired at their expense, whereas the repair shop they suggested I take my mover to was 9 miles away, that is why I didn't bother.

But it is on the same lawn mover that the aluminium cable snaps just at the point of IDT crimp, due to vibrations, all lawn movers no matter how well made will start to vibrate eventually as the blade hits stones and gets out of balance. so my one has been fixed twice now.

as for copper, I noticed how electrical cables went up in price , almost doubled overnight in 2012, and same again for copper pipes, but who knows we could be sitting on a gold mine, I will have to dig my garden and see what minerals I have beneath! might be a black hole underneath left by ancient miners! (LOL)