having been given a lovely small TV as an anniversary present, for our bedroom, we are now in need of 2 TV arial points in the house. And given that sprog has his own TV (currently in use as a monitor) it will probably need to be 3. What's the groups suggestions for
1) splitting the existing signal ? (Masthead booster ?)
2) runnning wires around for the TV sockets ? (Bearing in mind the prediliction women have for rearranging room layouts while you're at work). Is there a recommended wireless hub that works for TV signals ? Or is it better to bit the bullet and run cable ...
Normal way is to fit a UHF distribution amplifier. Aerial in and spurs to the outlets. A 'masthead booster' is a different beast, and has to be fitted at the aerial. The DA can go anywhere with access to the aerial feeder. Mine is in the cellar, but the loft is often easier. They come in various guises with commonly 2,4, 6 or 8 outputs.
You'll get them near anywhere - sheds etc - but here's a selection:-
1) Passive splitter,
2) amplifier followed by passive splitter,
3) distribution amplifier.
1) If you have a strong signal to start with (i.e. more than enough), you may be able to insert a good quality passive splitter. On the plus side, a passive splitter is cheap and introduces little extra noise or interference. The down side is that aach split will reduce the level of signal available to each "leg" - so if the signal was borderline before, chances are it will be inadequate after.
You will need a decent screened unit like:
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not some nasty bit of plastic tat like:
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Is the same as the above with an amplifier before it to lift the overall signal level enough to compensate for the splitting. A masthead amplifier is ideal, but not easy to retrofit. An advantage of 2 is that you can try 1 first, and then add an amp if it proves unsatisfactory.
3) A distribution amplifier (aka "loft box") is basically 2 in a single box. Some have extra bells and whistles for redistributing the RF output of a VCR or SAT box etc.
This is one of those cases where only cable will hack it. You can get wireless video senders - but they are usually a) poor, and b) only capable of sending one already decoded video channel to a remote TV, not a complete aerial feed.
If installing cable, make sure you use a decent foil screened co-ax, preferably with CAI approval, and a identity like CT-100 or PF-100.
Finally remember that analogue signals are switching off in the near future (when depends on your transmitter), this will be accompanied by a substantial lift in digital transmission output powers. Hence a system that is marginal now, will probably be fine after DSO.
Much easier to run cable from the loft and down the outside walls and drill through to your TV access points than to faff about with cable indoors. A roll of cable sufficient to supply every room is surprisingly cheap and you can just run it out under the eaves - hide it behind drain pipes etc - from a central distribution point.
I did this after our tv aerial blew down some years back, and me not being keen on heights, allowed the 'pros' to talk us into a new aerial with booster. This cost some £300 (no it wasn't my idea!) and boy was 'the missus' ripped off! It turned out that the 'boosted' signal was not as good as the signal we'd had from the original plain aerial, so I had to go up in the loft and investigate. Where I found the wires - yup the old ones! - stretched so tight that the distribution unit was practically suspended in mid air! When I found how the screened lead (and bags of connectors of all kinds) from Screwfix was a darn sight cheaper than chips, I rerouted all the leads around the edges of the loft and had enough to change all the old leads on all the equipment in the house, and put sockets - including for radio - in each room of the house.
The lead for satellite/cable does not look that different, apart from the connectors, but I haven't tried similar with that yet as we opted for wireless for the internet connections.
The tuning of all the different pieces of equipment for optimum picture quality is not always straight forward, and sometimes analogue aerial signals can interfere with some devices like DVDRs that have their own tuners (AVforum has lots on disconnecting various pins in scart connectors that sometimes helps, but we've found we record from the analogue not enough these days for it to be worth faffing with). Otherwise, I have noticed that the analogue signal from even channels like BBC1 has started to get wavy lines on, though it was perfect when we set things up. I am tending to suspect that this is deliberate to 'encourage' the switch to digital - just as I am also highly suspicious that compression on non HD tv has been increased to make HD look better - a lot of old series that used to record nice and sharp now look decidedly blurry in the repeats!
Enjoy designing your new layout: you might even get carried away and put in lots of extra mains sockets instead of all those extension leads...
When I said 'drill through' for your access points: I did of course mean starting from the *inside* so that the holes are neat and in the right place. (And of course keeping an eye on the possible routes of any electric chasing that may just happen to run under your preferred spot). You might even slope them down a little to discourage water ingress without sealer.
If you are really going for a boost, you may want a power point in the loft too if you haven't found the need for one already.
(Incidentally, in talking about cable running, I got a very handy little set of linkable fibreglass rods - like a mini version of a chimney sweep kit - from Dunstable Discount a while back, for a mere £4.50: if you see similar in your travels, it's well worth having.)
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