Just about finished the roof of the extension on the renovation I am
doing and my thoughts are turning towards the inside of the house.

I haven't really thought much about how the eventual purchasers will
receive their TV signal, and how it will be distributed through the
house.

Inside the house is back to brick walls in the original part of the
house and obviously the extension as well.

I guess the easiest and cheapest thing to do would be to get a (digital)
aerial installed and drop cable just into the living room (at both ends
to give them a choice of positioning the TV).

The better(?) and certainly more expensive option is to cable up each
room for TV and provide some sort of booster in the loft.

The Third (and probably least favoured) option is to get a Sky dish
installed and cable up for that.

I had thought about taking the opportunity to run Cat5 (of some flavour)
cable round the house but am shying away from this due to time and cost
issues.

Any thoughts on this are gratefully welcomed.

Cheers

Martin
--
Martin Carroll

Martin Carroll wrote:

Any thoughts on this are gratefully welcomed.


I'd just leave them an indoor TV aerial as a house warming present...

People have their own idea's now if it's going to be Aerial, Dish, Cable
or IPTV.

--
Adrian C

Adrian C wrote:
idea's now if it's going to be Aerial, Dish, Cable

My keyboard has emitted a stray apostrophe... :-(

--
Adrian C

Martin Carroll wrote:

I haven't really thought much about how the eventual purchasers will
receive their TV signal, and how it will be distributed through the
house.

I'd say to drop CT100 ("satellite grade" cable, but recommended even for
terrestrial telly really) from the loft to a sensible place in each
room. Don't bother connecting everything up - that can always be done
later, but it'd be criminal to waste the opportunity of putting in some
good cable runs. If you want to give them a start, connect the
living-room cable (in the loft) to an aerial.

The cable can later be used with a booster in the loft, or connected to
a dish, or used for distribution, or various other things. It's not
"future proof", but it's a good start. Having two runs side-by-side to
the main telly-place in the living room enables some other possibilities.

Pete

On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:30:11 +0100, Pete Verdon
d wrote:

Martin Carroll wrote:

I haven't really thought much about how the eventual purchasers will
receive their TV signal, and how it will be distributed through the
house.

I'd say to drop CT100 ("satellite grade" cable, but recommended even for
terrestrial telly really) from the loft to a sensible place in each
room. Don't bother connecting everything up - that can always be done
later, but it'd be criminal to waste the opportunity of putting in some
good cable runs. If you want to give them a start, connect the
living-room cable (in the loft) to an aerial.

The cable can later be used with a booster in the loft, or connected to
a dish, or used for distribution, or various other things. It's not
"future proof", but it's a good start. Having two runs side-by-side to
the main telly-place in the living room enables some other possibilities.

Pete

Thanks for this answer. I was pondering the same question as the OP.

Your answer about the CT100 was particularly useful.

On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:58:15 +0100 someone who may be Martin Carroll
wrote this:-

I guess the easiest and cheapest thing to do would be to get a (digital)
aerial installed and drop cable just into the living room (at both ends
to give them a choice of positioning the TV).

"Digital" aerials are something of a con. If I were you I would work
out what transmitter(s) are available and what the signal strength
is at the renovation and then get a suitable aerial from
http://www.aerialsandtv.com/atvschoiceofaerials.html, see the "Our
Aerial Recommendations" section part of the way down the page.

With the right aerial splitting the signal for two or more points is
no great problem.

The better(?) and certainly more expensive option is to cable up each
room for TV and provide some sort of booster in the loft.

Getting the right signal level with the right aerial is far better
then trying to boost a weak signal. Boosters boost noise as well as
the signal.

The Third (and probably least favoured) option is to get a Sky dish
installed and cable up for that.

A non $ky dish will get the same information from the same
satellites and make it available to a receiver.

I had thought about taking the opportunity to run Cat5 (of some flavour)
cable round the house but am shying away from this due to time and cost
issues.

I suggest that you put conduit from the roof to points in the room,
complete with draw strings. The points can be blanked off. Then
things can be wired up as the occupants want. Some of the options
include:

Some people recommend separate terrestrial and satellite cables to
rooms (some "combiners" have introduced interference int he past).

Some people recommend combining terrestrial and satellite signals in
one cable and decombining them at the point.

Some people think Cat 6 or whatever wiring is the future for all
applications.

You cannot decide all this, but you can allow the occupants to do
so.



--
David Hansen, Edinburgh
I will *always* explain revoked encryption keys, unless RIP prevents me
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/00023--e.htm#54

In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
Martin Carroll wrote:

Just about finished the roof of the extension on the renovation I am
doing and my thoughts are turning towards the inside of the house.

I haven't really thought much about how the eventual purchasers will
receive their TV signal, and how it will be distributed through the
house.

Inside the house is back to brick walls in the original part of the
house and obviously the extension as well.

I guess the easiest and cheapest thing to do would be to get a
(digital) aerial installed and drop cable just into the living room
(at both ends to give them a choice of positioning the TV).

The better(?) and certainly more expensive option is to cable up each
room for TV and provide some sort of booster in the loft.

The Third (and probably least favoured) option is to get a Sky dish
installed and cable up for that.

I had thought about taking the opportunity to run Cat5 (of some
flavour) cable round the house but am shying away from this due to
time and cost issues.

Any thoughts on this are gratefully welcomed.

Cheers

Martin

I suggest that you ask the question on uk.tech.digital-tv - where Bill
Wright and others will probably come along with some useful advice. But
*don't* mention digital aerials - there aint no such thing!! I'm sure you
really meant a high gain aerial with the appropriate channel coverage for
all the analog and digital channels available in the locality.
--
Cheers,
Roger
______
Email address maintained for newsgroup use only, and not regularly
monitored.. Messages sent to it may not be read for several weeks.
PLEASE REPLY TO NEWSGROUP!

On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:59:37 +0100 someone who may be "Roger Mills"
wrote this:-

I'm sure you
really meant a high gain aerial with the appropriate channel coverage for
all the analog and digital channels available in the locality.

Not even a high gain aerial, these are only necessary in areas of
low signal strength. In areas of high signal strength there is a lot
to say for log periodic aerials, which one seldom sees on houses
http://www.aerialsandtv.com/atvschoiceofaerials.html#LogPeriodics.

At the moment the choice is complicated by the digital switchover
dance. Currently many/most transmitters are transmitting some of the
digital signals out of the band on which the analogue signals are
transmitted and for which the current aerial should be designed.
Thus, at the moment, a wideband aerial may be sensible in many
cases. However, at digital switchover most of these transmitters
will revert back to one band and a grouped aerial will then often be
a better choice (particularly in weaker signal areas with band A
transmitters, where wideband aerials have less gain). There are only
a "dirty half dozen" transmitters which will remain with out of band
transmissions at digital switchover, including the one my aerial is
pointed at.

http://www.aerialsandtv.com/digitalnationwide.html gives
information if anyone is interested.

Of course this is "complicated", so I can understand why officials
have encouraged people to think that everyone should have a wideband
aerial.



--
David Hansen, Edinburgh
I will *always* explain revoked encryption keys, unless RIP prevents me
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/00023--e.htm#54

On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 08:20:39 +0100, David Hansen wrote:

On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:58:15 +0100 someone who may be Martin Carroll
wrote this:-

I guess the easiest and cheapest thing to do would be to get a (digital)
aerial installed and drop cable just into the living room (at both ends
to give them a choice of positioning the TV).

"Digital" aerials are something of a con. If I were you I would work out
what transmitter(s) are available and what the signal strength is at the
renovation and then get a suitable aerial from
http://www.aerialsandtv.com/atvschoiceofaerials.html, see the "Our
Aerial Recommendations" section part of the way down the page.


'Digital aerials' are less of a con than 'digital headphones'. In a lot
of areas aerials set up to receive the analogue signal will be completely
the wrong band for digital, and saying 'you need a digital aerial' at
least makes people aware that something probably needs to be done, even
if those of us who understand words like wideband and polarisation can
figure out if we need to change anything ourselves.

Having said that, I bought the £30 log-periodic aerial from Screwfix for
our medium-low signal area http://www.screwfix.com/prods/75506/
Electrical/TV-Range/Aerials-Fixings/Labgear-Mega-Booster-Amp-Outdoor-TV-
Aerial-Cable and it is excellent.

It's nice and neat, with a built-in masthead amp (which is the only sane
way to do it, if you've ever done noise calculations). I passively split
the signal to three TVs and the freeview signal is 80%+ on all of them,
in all weathers.