SKY - DIY Install OK?

[BodgeIt]

Hi, I'm planning to have sky multiroom installed shortly. I've seen some wretched looking installs, cables just thrown over the roof and guttering et.c and I want to make sure the cabling is as neat and unobtrusive as possible.The logical install is to traverse the house front to back through the attic and drop cables from the attic into the rooms. But a local aerial installer tells me sky engineers aren't allowed to work in peoples attics anymore so all cabling is external. So my plan is to run all the cabling myself so all the sky engineer has to do is mount the dish and terminate the cables at the dish and at the sky boxes. Anyone done this? Are sky OK with it? What's the exact spec of cable to use from the dish to the boxes.

TIA

[Stuart B]

Remember if you are getting a Sky+ box they need twin cable.

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[dennis]

Sky use a shotgun cable like these

will use your cables if you ask, however if they don't workyou may have a problem.You can run a pair of cables if you don't have the shotgun cable.I did this using ct100 from toolstation (my install is probably worse thansky do as I just stretched it along the car port roof).>> TIA

[BodgeIt]

The lounge will have a Sky HD box and the the main bedroom will have a sky+ box. So how will this affect the cabling requirements from the dish?

[Toby]

I did exactly the same when NTL installed at my house, I wanted to route the cables very specifically, so I spoke to them, and they said it was fine and supplied me with all the cable and asked me to call them when I was ready for them to connect it all up!

Toby...

[Vass]

both boxes require 2 cables. The dish will end up with 4 cables at its LNB

[dennis]

Sky fit a quad LNB and you need to run two cables to each box.

If you want more boxes sky have an octal LNB too.

[Dave Liquorice]

Probably a good idea to run two cables to every point that may want a DSAT box. You need two for the abilty to "watch one channel, record another" that the Sky+ box will let you do.

Does a "Skymulti room" installation just install a multiple outlet (Quad or higher) LNB with home runs to each room or do they install a quattro LNB and a proper multiswitch? I suspect the former as it's the cheaper, quicker and simpler for the Sky engineers (I use the term loosely) to fit.

As you are doing all the hard work of installing the cables why not do the whole job of dish/quattro LNB and a multiswitch? It's not difficult.

[Owain]

I think you'll also need phone points at the locations of each box, as the Sky boxes phone home occasionally and they must present the same CLI so Sky know the boxes are still in the same house and eligible for multi-room discount.

Shove in some network cables too - if Sky boxes don't stream stuff to other PCs etc yet, the next generation probably will.

Owain

[Lobster]

Me too (again NTL) though I'd already used my own cable. They were Ok with it subject to disclaiming responsibility if my cabling was inadequate etc etc (which of course it wasn't!)

David

[SantaUK]

Exactly as I did. I hate dishes - with an enormous passion, but hate visible cabling even more. I ran draw wires in my house, before the install date. Even a new phone socket behind the TV. When the engineer turned up, he actually did another install before mine across the road, took him an hour to install. Then on to me. I told him I wanted to drill out the loft through the gable end, and for him to mount the dish where the cable came out. He was delighted, full install of Sky done in 25 minutes. He even got a bit of lunch off me for a good job!

[Alan]

In message , BodgeIt wrote

cable

Satcure are possibly not the cheapest source

[Harry Bloomfield]

A few years ago, but yes.

CT100 at about £20 for 100m, from an electrical wholesaler.

Remember the dish needs to be located where it will be able to get a clear view of the sat. Our first installer had it on the wall looking up at the roof eaves, with the sat partially hidden from its view.

Unlike a terrestrial antenna, height is not important. It will work equally well mounted at ground level. Ours is 8' of the floor, hidden and not at all obvious if you don't know it is there.

The entire installation is really not that difficult. I use a sat system when touring with the caravan. I can usually have it set up and aligned in just a few minutes.