Split Sky HD into 3 rooms

[solver80]

Hi,

After recent refubrishment of the house, I have 2 wires from Twin LNB coming into the cubbord where I have another 2 wires from each 3 rooms (6 wires total).

How to connect all up so I could connect sky box in each room? I know that I should use OctoLNB but is too late now as it will be very hard to run more wires.

 

[mariust5]

There is no solution for what you want , only to maybe use one box at the time .

Best to get more cables and do it properly .

 

[solver80]

Ok I can live with one sky box but how to connect all up permamnently?

 

[mariust5]

If you want twin tuners in every room forget it .

If you want single tuners you connect 1 cable that's coming from the dish to room 1 , the second cable coming from the dish to a manual switch , where than it gets split in to room 2 and room 3 . That way you can have 2 boxes on , room 1 permanent and room 2 and room 3 alternate .

 

[Analoguesat]

Welcome to the forum!

Shame you didnt ask us a few months ago - we could have advised you with the cabling you needed.

You can use passive splitters to split the cabling but its not going to work satisfactorily long term.


Consider this- the lnb is an active device which responds to a combination of voltage changes & 22khz tone bursts to switch to one of four possible states with the band (hi/lo) and polarity (H&V):

13v tone off
13v tone on
18v tone off
18v tone on


State 4 will trump all the others if one box switches to a channel using that state and no matter what you do on the other box(es) you wont have a signal.

Unfortunately sooner or later someone is going to switch the second or third box on at an inopportune time and and the big film or football match in the living room is going to go off at a critical moment!

Or you are feeling lousy and stay in bed - you want to put the news on & find someone has left the living room box on a shopping channel & no signal for you.

At the end of the day its still going to be best to do the job properly - can you run cabling round the outside of the house for example - if you use cables that are similar colour to your brickwork you can hide them fairly well.

 

[Mickha]

You could use a professional multi room set up, using a Quattro LNB, which provides Vertical Low, Horizontal Low, Vertical High, and Horizontal High outputs, fed into a distribution box, then fed to each of your receivers.
For a temporary fix just connect the two wires, from your twin LNB, to your Sky + HD receiver, if the wires are too short you can use a cable extension connector, available in a lot of places, probably including your local DIY store.


Beaten to it, again !!!!!!!!!!

 

[rolfw]

You could use two stacker/destackers, that woiuld give you four feeds in the cupboard to use how you wish.

 

[archive10]

There is no solution for what you want , only to maybe use one box at the time .

Best to get more cables and do it properly .

I would disagree a little.

You are of course right, @mariust5, the best solution is to run two more cables form LNB to cupboard, then use a multisiwtich to do exactly what you want (that's what they're used for).

But if that's not desirable, then you could try:

1) use a two-input multiswitch instead of four-input. This only works if you restrict yourself to high-band or low-band (your normal Sky package will be spread over high and low band, so there will be limitations).

2) use a stacker/destacker option as @rolfw sugests. This will give you four (4) inputs into the cupboard, and then you should use a multiswitch for further distribution.

Price is a different matter.
More cable is the cheapest.
Multiswitch is more expensive than octo LNB, but worth the money.
Stackers are even more expensive.

What's your criteria?

 

[TJExcalibur]

I have looked into doing the same with my satellite set up. had loads of ideas from other more knowledgeable people and the best solution for me was an wireless hdmi extender. Did loads of reviews research and found the best was the Lindy wireless hdmi extender. Pricey but one review was using it exactly as I want to. Not arrived yet but will let you know on how it is.

 

[a33]

Instead of the manual switch or the passive splitters mentioned in messages #4 and #5, I would use a Smart Priority Switch.
That is a splitter, which switches the control to the priority output, or to the other output (if there happens to be no voltage on the priority output).
No unexpected switching anymore -- that is, when you are at the priority end of the switch! ;)

If you don't want to change much with the cables and/or LNB, that would be a simple and unexpensive solution.

(I don't know if the brand is 'Smart', and there are other brands, or if the name is meant to have the term 'smart' in it because the switching is 'smart' )

Greetz,
A33

 

[PaulR]

Smart is the type of switch i.e. autoswitching rather than pushbutton.

I long ago ran out of HD inputs on my UK TV and so bought a three way switch. Then I ran out of inputs on that and so had to upgrade, this time to a five way switch. They're not expensive and certainly switch automatically - mostly. There's a button in case the switch doesn't auto properly. I suspect that my problem is because the $ly Now box connected to it never switches off properly and only sort-of goes into stand-by.

The smart switches are surprisingly cheap as well.

 

[TK-loki]

i just did it with a 8 way lnb, all 8 cables in roof and then bedrooms via a 13 mm hole and trucking
come out on the other side to front room

 

[PaulR]

That's multiple outputs from an LNB, OP is asking about feeding the picture and sound into different rooms.

 

[davemurgtroyd]

Instead of the manual switch or the passive splitters mentioned in messages #4 and #5, I would use a Smart Priority Switch.
That is a splitter, which switches the control to the priority output, or to the other output (if there happens to be no voltage on the priority output).
No unexpected switching anymore -- that is, when you are at the priority end of the switch! ;)

If you don't want to change much with the cables and/or LNB, that would be a simple and unexpensive solution.

(I don't know if the brand is 'Smart', and there are other brands, or if the name is meant to have the term 'smart' in it because the switching is 'smart' )

Greetz,
A33

Absolutely useless if using more than one Sky box. Sky boxes do NOT remove power from the lnb output in standby and require Sky box to either be turned off at mains or put into deep sleep mode to allow switch to change to other output (so Sky box would then not be able to record).

If mixing one Sky box with other receivers then if Sky box is installed on "slave" input then it will work.

Smart priority lnb switches work by detecting the voltage on lnb cable to the master input - if voltage present then "master" output has control of lnb and if no voltage present then slave has control.