Dodgy happenings with distro system

il_cacciatore

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Fixed 90cm mesh Hotbird dish with universal LNB and Echostar DSB 2110 VCi viaaccess. Televes DAT75 and Labgear HDU681.
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Hello.

I have a satellite dish that we use to receive and watch Hotbird for the foreign channels. I decided that it would be good to pipe the satellite around the house as well as ordinary TV so I bought a Labgear HDU681S Distribution System that gives us the option to hook up CCTV and radio plus enable us in the future to connect Sky+ etc.

Installed all the cables with RG6 except the cable from the aerial with ordinary coaxial and all connections with F-connectors ensuring no touching central and outer wires. No cables are running further than about 17m lengths.

We live in a low reception area due to the fact that we are on the 'shadowed' side of a hill from the freeview enabled transmitters coupled with the fact that there are huge trees in front too, none of our close neighbours can get digital but only ch 1 - 4 from a repeater mast that is in good view. Therefore we bought the Televes DAT75 aerial which seems to get us a signal strength of 45-55% with low bit error levels of 1. When we connect this aerial directly into a television we get good reception of both analogue and digital but when it is plugged into the labgear we can only get good digital with no analogue. Thats problem number one.

The Labgear has the ability to be used without forwarding the satellite signal to the other wallplates with the use of a switch which can either be set to 'SAT' or 'UHF & CCTV'. With the satellite receiver plugged in and it set to 'SAT' we loose reception in all other wallplates but when its set to 'UHF & CCTV' it functions normally. When I bridge the distribution system with connecting a cable from Down and Up link with the switch set to 'SAT', TV reception is normal in the other wall plates, when I bridge the wallplate with a cable with the distro box still set to 'SAT' then no reception can be received in the other wallplates. Thats problem number two.

My theory is problem no. one is attributed to a faulty distro. system and that no. two is a faulty wallplate. I'm new to these sort of systems but didn't think they could be so annoying.

Anyone any ideas on what could be the problems? Any help is much appreciated. Hopefully we can get this system fixed and forget about it. :cool:

Thanks.


P.S Chances are I've posted this in the wrong section :S
 

rolfw

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Can you draw a diagram of your connections please?
 

Robbo

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Hi,
This may be of some help.
_http://www.cyberselect.co.uk/products/Labgear_HDU681S_wiring.pdf
 

il_cacciatore

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Fixed 90cm mesh Hotbird dish with universal LNB and Echostar DSB 2110 VCi viaaccess. Televes DAT75 and Labgear HDU681.
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Can you draw a diagram of your connections please?

Sure, I've done a quick photo shop of the distribution box. Hope this shows all the info... :)

Robbo, thanks for the link, I looked at that before but that shows a different setup to the one I intended on. :)
 

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il_cacciatore

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Fixed 90cm mesh Hotbird dish with universal LNB and Echostar DSB 2110 VCi viaaccess. Televes DAT75 and Labgear HDU681.
My Location
Scotland
I think its something to do with the distro system, why else would it not allow analogue but digital only when both work fine when plugged direct into the television?

Going to buy a new wallplate because it seems very likely the one I have is dodgy. :)
 

rolfw

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Berkshire
Is the TV aerial cable looped through the satellite receiver? It doesn't show it as such on your diagram and to enable supply of both TV and satellite signals around the house, it must be.

PS. sorry I missed your diagram, else would have replied earlier. :)
 

Robbo

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il_cacciatore said:
I think its something to do with the distro system, why else would it not allow analogue but digital only when both work fine when plugged direct into the television?

Going to buy a new wallplate because it seems very likely the one I have is dodgy. :)


I agree, from your description it looks like the wallplate is dodgy.
Specifically the Triplexer part.
Because if you have connected the downlink cable to the uplink cable and the other TVs work fine on 'SAT', but they don't work with the wallplate connected, it backs up that theory.

Also bridging the wall plate ( from TV out to uplink Return I presume) and you get no signal in other rooms, backs it up further.

What might disprove this though, is Are you getting a proper signal on
the main TV, through the wall plate?? If you are it disproves the above, and could mean that just the uplink connection is broken. This could be checked I presume, by bypassing just the uplink part, by connecting a cable from the TV out straight to the uplink cable.
 

il_cacciatore

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Fixed 90cm mesh Hotbird dish with universal LNB and Echostar DSB 2110 VCi viaaccess. Televes DAT75 and Labgear HDU681.
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Scotland
The distribution box was faulty. The new one works perfect. Thanks for all the help. :-worship
 
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