New-build: what are these connections?

Usjes

Hi,

I was looking at a new-build recently and it was only afterward that I started wondering about TV points in the rooms. Most of the bedrooms had face-plates like the ones shown in the attached picture. The same two faceplates next to the sockets in each room. What would typically be behind these? A T.V. point ? Cat5 wiring for data ? Something else ?

Thanks,

Usjes.

Hopefully someone will come along with a proper answer for you, but in the meantime - I built an extension last year, and I ended up with a double blanking plate where there were a cluster of wires (after I'd decided at the very last minute to place a lightswitch somewhere else instead).

Usjes

Deleted User wrote: »

Hopefully someone will come along with a proper answer for you, but in the meantime - I built an extension last year, and I ended up with a double blanking plate where there were a cluster of wires (after I'd decided at the very last minute to place a lightswitch somewhere else instead).

Yes, I was thinking it might not be possible to tell from the picture what they are but they are definitely something specific because there was the exact same setup in at least 3 different rooms; 2 plugs with these two faceplates to the right of them, a TV point would make sense but I'm not sure what the second one might be, maybe cat5 cabling.

Usjes

Usjes wrote: »

Yes, I was thinking it might not be possible to tell from the picture what they are but they are definitely something specific because there was the exact same setup in at least 3 different rooms; 2 plugs with these two faceplates to the right of them, a TV point would make sense but I'm not sure what the second one might be, maybe cat5 cabling.

would bet money on CAT5 and coax

Gumbo

Most likely a coax cable and or internet cable that is routed back to the main income point.

It’s because when virgin media come to your house they will replace them with VM branded tv points.

Charles Ingles

Are you in Dublin?
A lot of houses pre wired for virgin media broadband

Usjes

Yes, I am in Dublin and I have seen other new-builds specifying 'Wired for Virgin Media and Eir'.

So, assuming these two faceplates have Cat5 and coax behind them how does this work in practice ? One of the bedrooms had these connections about 6 foot above the floor on the wall facing the bed. Makes perfect sense to mount a flat screen if you're into watching TV in bed but what is confusing me is where does the set-top box go ? I have a UPC media box at the moment and its about 30cm*20cm*20cm, It doesn't make any sense to me to have something like this jutting out of the wall at head height ?
Or does 'Wired for VM etc' mean that you have a central media box for the whole house and different remotes (on different frequencies) to change the channel in different rooms or something ?
I've only ever had a TV in a sitting room before where there is a cabinet for the media box/dvd player etc. It does seem common now to see flatscreens in bedrooms, kitchens and all over the place but it hadn't occurred to me until now to wonder about the logistics of this, the screen itself is slim and un-obtrusive but where does the set-top box go ?

Thanks,

Usjes.

I'm a bit confused, but why would they put blanking plates on them, instead of just putting the right plates for the connection?

dubrov

Deleted User wrote:

I'm a bit confused, but why would they put blanking plates on them, instead of just putting the right plates for the connection?

Yeah, it makes no sense. More likely it is just covering up a hole

salmocab

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I'm a bit confused, but why would they put blanking plates on them, instead of just putting the right plates for the connection?

Cost, that’s all

Gumbo

Deleted User wrote: »

I'm a bit confused, but why would they put blanking plates on them, instead of just putting the right plates for the connection?

dubrov wrote: »

Yeah, it makes no sense. More likely it is just covering up a hole

salmocab wrote: »

Cost, that’s all

Because, years ago, you used to be to get the likes of Cablelink and NTL in to our plate cover on during the build. But I assume at some stage the management at those companies done a cost analysis and said hey, were putting in 10,000 faceplates but getting only 7,456 new customers so it’s a money loss.

Now, the builder runs the cable and leaves them blank as the home owner may go with VM, Vodafone, sky or similar.

dubrov

kceire wrote: »

Because, years ago, you used to be to get the likes of Cablelink and NTL in to our plate cover on during the build. But I assume at some stage the management at those companies done a cost analysis and said hey, were putting in 10,000 faceplates but getting only 7,456 new customers so it’s a money loss.

Now, the builder runs the cable and leaves them blank as the home owner may go with VM, Vodafone, sky or similar.

It is still a widespread practice by Virgin Media in new builds. The beauty is that they run a single coax around the house making it difficult to switch to Sky/FTA at a later stage. The builder saves on cabling cost and Virgin get more subscribers. Only the house purchaser gets screwed.

Blank plates are about the same price as Cat5e plates so very little saving to be had.

Colonel Claptrap

Does the house come wired for an alarm?

Usjes

dubrov wrote: »

It is still a widespread practice by Virgin Media in new builds. The beauty is that they run a single coax around the house making it difficult to switch to Sky/FTA at a later stage. The builder saves on cabling cost and Virgin get more subscribers. Only the house purchaser gets screwed.

Blank plates are about the same price as Cat5e plates so very little saving to be had.

> making it difficult to switch to Sky/FTA at a later stage.

How does this work, I mean if they run single coax all round the house how does this lock you in to Virgin ? Can you not just connect Sky/FTA/Whatever to the input of the coax and then you have Sky/FTA/whatever running all over the house, I mean the cable (whether coax or cat5) can carry whatever signal is applied at its input, can't it ?

It seems very likely that these blanking plates cover coax and cat5 but I'm still confused about where the decoder/mediabox sits ? For example see the attached photos, there's clearly no big 30cm*20cm*20cm mediabox involved, does that mean that these wall mounted TVs can only receive Saorview or how does it work ?

awec

Most likely your house has been wired with Cat5 and coax. These are the blank plates that are in bedrooms and stuff, right?

It means when you get your internet in you can haved wired connection in all the bedrooms. There'll be a central point somewhere were all these connections go, possibly the attic, where you can have a switch.

It also means your house is already wired for multiroom TV.

If you take the plates off it'll be obvious what they are. Cat5 is like 8 small little cables bundled up, coax is one bigger wire.

Usjes

awec wrote: »

Most likely your house has been wired with Cat5 and coax. These are the blank plates that are in bedrooms and stuff, right?

It means when you get your internet in you can haved wired connection in all the bedrooms. There'll be a central point somewhere were all these connections go, possibly the attic, where you can have a switch.

It also means your house is already wired for multiroom TV.

If you take the plates off it'll be obvious what they are. Cat5 is like 8 small little cables bundled up, coax is one bigger wire.

Yes, the blank plates are in the bedrooms etc.

>There'll be a central point somewhere were all these connections go, possibly the attic, where you can have a switch.
> It also means your house is already wired for multiroom TV.

I was thinking this might be the case but the part that is puzzling me is how the remote control works, eg I'm in a bedroom on the ground floor and the central switch is in the attic, is my remote control talking to the central switch in the attic ? If not, then I can see how the central switch could just decode all the channels and send them to the points in all the rooms, then the remote control would just make the TV select one of the channels to view but if this is the case how would you record or pause TV without some sort of local buffer at the TV in the room ?


I think my basic question is:
Do you need a separate box in each room if you want pay TV (eg Sky, Virgin, ...) and want to be able to record/pause TV ? If so then it seems to defeat the purpose of having a wall mounted flatscreen because you're going to have to find somewhere to attach a bulky mediabox at headheigth which could be an eye-sore in more ways than one.
And if this is the case, I'm wondering what is the deal with the examples in the photos I posted above, Saorview only maybe ?

awec

Sky multiroom requires a box in each room. The secondary boxes are actually pretty small, much smaller than the main box that goes under your main TV.

Each room can watch seperate channels, but anything you record can be watched in any room.

The internet will need a switch somewhere. Whoever wired the house should be able to tell you where all the cables come together, probably the electrician.

salmocab

awec wrote: »

Sky multiroom requires a box in each room. The secondary boxes are actually pretty small, much smaller than the main box that goes under your main TV.

Each room can watch seperate channels, but anything you record can be watched in any room.

The internet will need a switch somewhere. Whoever wired the house should be able to tell you where all the cables come together, probably the electrician.

It’s possible the cables are daisy chained which is a pain for future flexibility

Eric Cartman

Deleted User wrote: »

I'm a bit confused, but why would they put blanking plates on them, instead of just putting the right plates for the connection?

if you terminate cat.5 youre supposed to test it and stand over it,
if its virgin coax then they won't let you terminate it for them

this way the builder can just throw whatever cables in the wall there, put it on the spec sheet of the house and if it doesnt work then ahh well, not my job anymore.

dubrov

Usjes wrote: »

> making it difficult to switch to Sky/FTA at a later stage.

How does this work, I mean if they run single coax all round the house how does this lock you in to Virgin ? Can you not just connect Sky/FTA/Whatever to the input of the coax and then you have Sky/FTA/whatever running all over the house, I mean the cable (whether coax or cat5) can carry whatever signal is applied at its input, can't it ?

Satellite signals cannot normally be split. Traditionally with a satellite setup, you would run two cables from the dish directly to each TV point (3 TV Points = 6 separate cables). The second cable allows one satellite channel to be recorded while another is being watched.

Cable signals can be split with a simple splitter. If Virgin Media installed the cable, they would have wired the house in a loop meaning that you could only run satellite signal around the house. If you wanted full watch/record in each room you would have to completely rewire.

Note, there are newer satellite LNBs (device that sits on your satellite dish) called Unicable which allow multiple satellite signals sent over a single coaxial. I don't think this is compatible with Sky though but will work if you want to get free to air satellite.

So in short, if Virgin Media wire a house, it means you need to send money recabling to get full multi room functionality from Sky/FTA satellite.

Ray Palmer

If it is network cabling it should be cat6 not cat5 at this point.

Plasmoid

As everyone has said, one is probably the Cat5/Cat6, one is then probably a coax cable.

One other possibility though is surround sound.
I've been in some apartments where there is an additional blank panel in TV area, alongside the blank for the Coax for Antenna on roof and Coax for Cable and a blank for Ethernet. This third panel had 2 speaker cables from it, and on the opposite wall there were two blanks for the speaker cables to come out.

That was though either something the original owner opted for, or a Celtic Tiger thing.

Gumbo

Ray Palmer wrote: »

If it is network cabling it should be cat6 not cat5 at this point.

If they were a new build recently I’d agree but these are under construction well over a year.

Ray Palmer

Ray Palmer wrote: »

If it is network cabling it should be cat6 not cat5 at this point.

CAT6 is less forgiving than CAT5E in terms of bending and pulling.

I would be wary of the average electrician running it TBH.