Riverside Cottage 3

[The Natural Philosopher]

I would run a satellite cable (75ohm quality coax) to everywhere you will need TV/radio/satellite, or, if you use both terrestrial AND satellite, two. You can mux both signals down it - and indeed FM radio - but its hard work.

Then add at least one cat 5 cable. In extremis, you can add local switches to get more ports on the cat 5, and if that's gigabit back to the main hub, having several; conversations down one cable shouldn't slow you down much

The satellite/TV/radio cables you feed from a distribution amp. I had one that happily took a VHF aerial and TV aerial and fed about 12 cables to the house wiring.

It proved to be reasonably possible to do evil things with the coax, like dasy chaining sockets off it for 'TV here...FM tuner there' without it being too bad on reflection, mainly because the distribution amp at least provided proper termination.

You can run tow 100Mnps channels down one CAT5 cable or one 100Mbps and a phone...but its a bodge.

Wire is cheap, so lay in plenty. The big problem is then what to do with unused bits. Sometimes leaving them coiled up in the back box is sane. Or if you have hollow stud walls, coiled up in there.

Document everything.

[The Natural Philosopher]

However that means the devices will have to share the link back to the main switch.

It really depends on the 'conversations' the kit is having and whether the Internet is the only thing you are actually connecting to. Here I have a server that is also a media server, and so I need high speed to that. And for big file transfers to and from it not to upset the internet speed for other machines on the network.

[Tim Lamb]

OK. There is an existing TV amp and distribution system which may need updating.

Ta.

[Tim Lamb]

In message , The Natural Philosopher writes

No satellite here yet. It may come as the new house is in a less good location for London terrestrial.

OK chaps. That is plenty for now. I'll come back for more detail when we get around to second fix. (could be 9 months!)

Thanks

[Michael Chare]

If your question is how to I install cables in my house, then I would suggest that you use the latest standard which is Cat 6.

The cables must to be correctly terminated, it is important to retain the twist as far a possible.

The cables need to be run back to a convenient central point where you have your external internet connection terminates and a Gbps capable switch.

Depending on the size of your house you may find it appropriate to plan for a 2nd wireless access point and maybe a 2nd switch. The maximum cable length is 100m, though that is more of a consideration for office blocks.

I did find a patch lead I had bought was not good for 1Gbps.

[S Viemeister]

There don't seem to be any grants like that, for my area (northwest Scotland).

[Mark Allread]

Yes, I think it is only England and Wales that can get them. Pester your MSP/Parliament to see if they will follow the lead given by the southerners. Maybe there are more votes to be had by giving out 'baby boxes' though.

[dennis]

That only works for short runs, up to about 20m. More than that and you can get odd problems.

[dennis]

It shouldn't.

Get a mains switch put in an easy to reach place so you can power it all down if needed.

[dennis]

Most sat recorders need two coax cables so don't skimp and put in one if you want sat TV.

[charles]

I used a UPS - much tidier and didn't need attention.

[Capitol]

I've found these to be reliable, but you need to buy an extra component as well to inject the supply voltage. It's very difficult to buy lossless combiners.

[Capitol]

Yes, it's also possible to get away with a system where the outputs, feed back after remote amplification and combining into the input amplifier. As said, DOCUMENT EVERYTHING, there's nothing worse than looking into a tangle of wires you did 20yrs ago and wasting days redocumenting from those wires.

I have found that a cheap rf modulator makes a good signal generator:-

and this is the best detector I have found:-

Mapping the signal strengths has proved to be a good idea when fault finding. I have provided both up and down feeds at most TV outlet positions, this allows the various PVRs/cctcv to be viewed at any outlet point.

[Terry Casey]

As I think you are aware by now, the answer is no but it is always worth leaving a nylon draw rope in place alongside the cables to make it easier to pull in more at a later stage.

Here's one very good reason for always pulling in two together (ignoring the possibility for splitting a single feed as has already been discussed).

I tend to use my laptop downstairs whereas my wife has hers on a small desk in the bedroom. There is also a desktop in the spare bedroom but the incoming feed and modem are downstairs.

We have two laser printers - a full duplex mono which I use mainly and a colour machine my wife uses for most of her stuff.

The mono printer is downstairs near me and the colour printer is beside the desktop in the spare bedroom (because of space limitations on my wife's desk) but close by.

Thus we both have the printer we most want to use close at hand but, as they are both networked, of course, we both have access to both printers as required.

[Andy Burns]

Is draw rope actually that much cheaper than cat5e?