Advice on 25 TV Points

wyndham

Hi All.

Seeking some advice. Have televisions in approx 25 bedrooms. Our current /previous set up was with oldstyle ntl. A coaxial runs back from each room to a box downstairs. Here, the signal is split with 3 interlinked 8 way splitters/boosters. These are powered type and thus are permanently powered on. I can attach photos later if I'm not being clear. I'm not too sure about this type of thing.

This setup isn't really working out any more. The picture quality in the rooms has always been just about watchable but seems to have deteriorated in the last couple of months. Perhaps ntl have changed something in their setup.

I have been looking at different options but am confused about saorview, freesat, etc.

It's not essential to have RTE and TV3 in the makeup, and a greater range of foreign (european) language channels would actually be preferable to these, if we had BBC and the uk channels.

I have enquired with a couple of installation companies and was quoted €120-€180 per month on ongoing maintenance contract, with no setup/installation/equipment costs. They supply the equipment. I don't really want to go down that road as it seems quite expensive. €2,000 per annum.

The tvs are old philips crt type and are 4-5 years old, I would like to get another couple of years out of them if possible.

I have seen a digital freeview system in Homebase yesterday for €160, including dish and box.

What would people recommend in my situation? Should I get a dish and 25 digital boxes? Would the current cabling set-up be adequate with the regular coaxial and splitters? Where would I buy the boxes in bulk? Would I need just 1 dish and lnb, given that I have the splitters?

I don't mind paying somebody for the initial installation and setup of the dish,etc, but want to own the equipment, as I assume this would be a cheaper option.

Thanks for any help and suggestions.

homelink

wyndham wrote: »

Hi All.

Seeking some advice. Have televisions in approx 25 bedrooms. Our current /previous set up was with oldstyle ntl. A coaxial runs back from each room to a box downstairs. Here, the signal is split with 3 interlinked 8 way splitters/boosters. These are powered type and thus are permanently powered on. I can attach photos later if I'm not being clear. I'm not too sure about this type of thing.

This setup isn't really working out any more. The picture quality in the rooms has always been just about watchable but seems to have deteriorated in the last couple of months. Perhaps ntl have changed something in their setup.

I have been looking at different options but am confused about saorview, freesat, etc.

It's not essential to have RTE and TV3 in the makeup, and a greater range of foreign (european) language channels would actually be preferable to these, if we had BBC and the uk channels.

I have enquired with a couple of installation companies and was quoted €120-€180 per month on ongoing maintenance contract, with no setup/installation/equipment costs. They supply the equipment. I don't really want to go down that road as it seems quite expensive. €2,000 per annum.

The tvs are old philips crt type and are 4-5 years old, I would like to get another couple of years out of them if possible.

I have seen a digital freeview system in Homebase yesterday for €160, including dish and box.

What would people recommend in my situation? Should I get a dish and 25 digital boxes? Would the current cabling set-up be adequate with the regular coaxial and splitters? Where would I buy the boxes in bulk? Would I need just 1 dish and lnb, given that I have the splitters?

I don't mind paying somebody for the initial installation and setup of the dish,etc, but want to own the equipment, as I assume this would be a cheaper option.

Thanks for any help and suggestions.

What you need is a communal solution. There are different options depending on what sort of service you want to offer. If you want to go with a FTA satellite box in each room you will need a dish connected to multi switches which will then supply each room via the existing TV cabling. This will give you all the available astra FTA channels in each room. You could also have either a second dish (or single dish with multiple lnb's) to provide European channels. If you went down this route you would need a multi switch that will cater for two satellites (9 in /32 out multi-switch). This type of multi-switch could also provide Saorview from an aerial, but you would require a dtt/sat combo box for each room. there are numerous other options available, it depends what you want & how much you want to spend.

wyndham

Thanks for the reply.

You say multiswitches. Is that a splitter/amplifier? Something like this:?

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?rls=com.microsoft:en-ie:IE-ContextMenu&oe=UTF-8&rlz=1I7GGLL_en-GB&q=multiswitches&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=5510242584568837006&sa=X&ei=nNPtTe2mOYOt8QOQ-aGiBw&ved=0CDcQ8gIwAg#scoring=tp

I think 1 dish would be adequate for the amount of channels I need to offer.

homelink

wyndham wrote: »

Thanks for the reply.

You say multiswitches. Is that a splitter/amplifier? Something like this:?

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?rls=com.microsoft:en-ie:IE-ContextMenu&oe=UTF-8&rlz=1I7GGLL_en-GB&q=multiswitches&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=5510242584568837006&sa=X&ei=nNPtTe2mOYOt8QOQ-aGiBw&ved=0CDcQ8gIwAg#scoring=tp

I think 1 dish would be adequate for the amount of channels I need to offer.

http://www.vision-products.co.uk/productpage.asp?productcode=V9-932&subcategoryid=67
Something like this would suffice with a single dish with 2 Quattro lnb's (one for astra & one for European)

Digital Satellite TV

Wyndham, we were asked about this recently from a guy in Galway and we did up a page with the options available for this type of job. He had a smaller set up, 10 rooms approx but the same info would apply to you.

You can see the options.......

Distributing Irish & UK Channels around a Hotel

St Senan

Here is a similar thread about the same http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055726178. with saorview now a couple of rf modulators will do for the Irish channels.

khumbu

A FTA box would do instead of a combo box if a saorsat (9e) dish was connected to one of multiswitch inputs.