How many feeds do you require to each apartment, 32 apartments is considered as a large system (how many apartments per floor), particularly if you require more than two satellite feeds to each unit.
We want for each apartment the ability to be able to receive DTT, DAB, FM, Freeview, FreeSat+, Sky, Sky+ at a multiplexed faceplate e.g. Triax 304264. All the apartments are in the same building, a straightforward block. There are no external connection requirements.
There are 8 floors, 4 apartments each floor. The dish(es), and DTT and DAB antenna will be on the roof.
I would have expected that a solution would involve basically a 9 channel 4 way splitter to 4 off 9X16 Multiswitches, then 2 coax cables to each apartment. To try and be flexible we would like the system to be able to handle 2 dishes if required in the future, hence the 9X16 multiswitches.
I should point out that because of the existing 'TV position' within the building design, the cabling is almost certainly to be external, so the multiswitches will be positioned in a plant room on the roof near the dish(es)/antenna.) This precludes the possibility of having multiswitches in an internal common area distributed on alternate floors, because of the extra cost and disruption of cabling within each apartment (from one end to the opposite corner of the apartment).
There has been a suggestion that we should consider fibre solution. From what I have gleaned it seems that fibre is used in the backbone between ODU units at the head end, and GTU units, and then into multiswitches which are coax to the faceplate. In our example the fibre would be about 5 metres long at the very most. To me this system approach would seem to offer no advantage over a conventional multiswitch solution.
I think that there is the possibility to split the ODU signal X2 then X4, then 8X4 and feed the resultant 32 fibres to a GTU (e.g. Invacom F102029 or F102030) , one to each apartment . That would be distributing optically as much as possible. (I am assuming these GTUs have the ability to accept commands from a receiver to select the relevant satellite feed, polarisation and High/Low settings needed.) This seems nice and futuristic, but in the real world, the cost of 32 off GTU units alone would seem to be much greater than the equivalent multiswitches, and if we add in the additional dish flexibility, the cost of each GTU is almost double again. In fact I think the overall cost might be even greater than a 3 or 4 dish multiswitch distribution system.
I feel that there must be something really missing in my understanding, so please don't be afraid to point out where I have gone wrong. Thank you for assisting.