cat 5 cabling and Sky
Discussion
evening,
I know very little about TVs, in fact had never bought one in my entire life until recently...
we had our house rewired, there is cat 5 cabling throughout, we have bt infinity and have just had sky installed.
i'm sure this is a very expansive question, and maybe one for the electrician, but he wasn't super helpful...but how can we best make use of the cabling we have installed?
so there is a sky box in the tv lounge, which runs sky HD to a tv on the wall via a single hdmi cable, in the kitchen we have sky through the co-ax, non HD, the tv guy did mention I could get HD if I really wanted to...how easy is this? and there's cat 5 cabling in most rooms.
and at the moment we can only watch one sky channel at a time in both rooms, can we run 2 different channels concurrently?
thanks very much, and apologies in advance if I have missed anything obvious....
I know very little about TVs, in fact had never bought one in my entire life until recently...
we had our house rewired, there is cat 5 cabling throughout, we have bt infinity and have just had sky installed.
i'm sure this is a very expansive question, and maybe one for the electrician, but he wasn't super helpful...but how can we best make use of the cabling we have installed?
so there is a sky box in the tv lounge, which runs sky HD to a tv on the wall via a single hdmi cable, in the kitchen we have sky through the co-ax, non HD, the tv guy did mention I could get HD if I really wanted to...how easy is this? and there's cat 5 cabling in most rooms.
and at the moment we can only watch one sky channel at a time in both rooms, can we run 2 different channels concurrently?
thanks very much, and apologies in advance if I have missed anything obvious....
Op - sounds like technology isn't your thing 
The magic eye kit would have been used to control sky box from the kitchen. Anything between 10 and 25 quid is probably fair from an electrician, maybe a bit more if he provided a second sky remote and a lot more if he included the to cabling costs.
I suspect getting hd vision in the kitchen will be difficult for you. Hdmi extenders are possible as mentioned but you have to use the cabling completely differently, buy more kit, etc. A second sky box would work but then you'll pay more to sky and need 2 more cables from your dish to the kitchen.
Your cat 5 cabling is typically for data - your high speed broadband is accessible where these cables are without using wifi which would slow it down (you'll still have wifi for iPads etc). If you plugged your sky box in then you can access a lot of online content through your sky box inc bbc iplayer.
Other uses for cat 5 tend to be for music streaming and games consoles - all of them use the cable as data so can all be on the network at the same time unlike the hdmi extender They can use wifi but this can get glitchy and not be as fast.
Your tv in the kitchen may also have a network port in it, if so plug it in and you may be able to access iplayer etc that way too.
The magic eye kit would have been used to control sky box from the kitchen. Anything between 10 and 25 quid is probably fair from an electrician, maybe a bit more if he provided a second sky remote and a lot more if he included the to cabling costs.
I suspect getting hd vision in the kitchen will be difficult for you. Hdmi extenders are possible as mentioned but you have to use the cabling completely differently, buy more kit, etc. A second sky box would work but then you'll pay more to sky and need 2 more cables from your dish to the kitchen.
Your cat 5 cabling is typically for data - your high speed broadband is accessible where these cables are without using wifi which would slow it down (you'll still have wifi for iPads etc). If you plugged your sky box in then you can access a lot of online content through your sky box inc bbc iplayer.
Other uses for cat 5 tend to be for music streaming and games consoles - all of them use the cable as data so can all be on the network at the same time unlike the hdmi extender They can use wifi but this can get glitchy and not be as fast.
Your tv in the kitchen may also have a network port in it, if so plug it in and you may be able to access iplayer etc that way too.
As suggested the Cat5 is primarily for an ethernet connection, e.g. for a smart TV with network feature although they can be used for a dedicated connection for HDMI extenders.
The examples below are pretty typical equipment, and I used the Neet equipment when we installed a bathroom TV to take a feed from the Sky box in the living room and have no experience of the single feed item.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Neet%C2%AE-Extender-networ...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Portta-Extension-Extender-...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Neet%C2%AE-SPLITTER-Amplif...
In short, one set of extenders, a splitter, and the necessary cables. If the Sky box is already connected to the router, then an alternative to the Magic Eye would be the Sky+ app on an iPad, or iPod Touch.
The examples below are pretty typical equipment, and I used the Neet equipment when we installed a bathroom TV to take a feed from the Sky box in the living room and have no experience of the single feed item.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Neet%C2%AE-Extender-networ...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Portta-Extension-Extender-...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Neet%C2%AE-SPLITTER-Amplif...
In short, one set of extenders, a splitter, and the necessary cables. If the Sky box is already connected to the router, then an alternative to the Magic Eye would be the Sky+ app on an iPad, or iPod Touch.
Jon1967x said:
Op - sounds like technology isn't your thing
The magic eye kit would have been used to control sky box from the kitchen. Anything between 10 and 25 quid is probably fair from an electrician, maybe a bit more if he provided a second sky remote and a lot more if he included the to cabling costs.
I suspect getting hd vision in the kitchen will be difficult for you. Hdmi extenders are possible as mentioned but you have to use the cabling completely differently, buy more kit, etc. A second sky box would work but then you'll pay more to sky and need 2 more cables from your dish to the kitchen.
Your cat 5 cabling is typically for data - your high speed broadband is accessible where these cables are without using wifi which would slow it down (you'll still have wifi for iPads etc). If you plugged your sky box in then you can access a lot of online content through your sky box inc bbc iplayer.
Other uses for cat 5 tend to be for music streaming and games consoles - all of them use the cable as data so can all be on the network at the same time unlike the hdmi extender They can use wifi but this can get glitchy and not be as fast.
Your tv in the kitchen may also have a network port in it, if so plug it in and you may be able to access iplayer etc that way too.
this is sounding about right.The magic eye kit would have been used to control sky box from the kitchen. Anything between 10 and 25 quid is probably fair from an electrician, maybe a bit more if he provided a second sky remote and a lot more if he included the to cabling costs.
I suspect getting hd vision in the kitchen will be difficult for you. Hdmi extenders are possible as mentioned but you have to use the cabling completely differently, buy more kit, etc. A second sky box would work but then you'll pay more to sky and need 2 more cables from your dish to the kitchen.
Your cat 5 cabling is typically for data - your high speed broadband is accessible where these cables are without using wifi which would slow it down (you'll still have wifi for iPads etc). If you plugged your sky box in then you can access a lot of online content through your sky box inc bbc iplayer.
Other uses for cat 5 tend to be for music streaming and games consoles - all of them use the cable as data so can all be on the network at the same time unlike the hdmi extender They can use wifi but this can get glitchy and not be as fast.
Your tv in the kitchen may also have a network port in it, if so plug it in and you may be able to access iplayer etc that way too.
our internet hub (bt infinity) is nowhere near a cat 5 point, so 'hard wiring' our tvs will be hard presumably?
additionally we only have one HDMI lead buried in the wall to the tv, so without trailing wires are there many options for sound and differing sources (DVD, games console, sky box etc etc) to come and go from the tv?
understand I should have sorted these issues upfront but I am pretty ignorant on this score.
I've decided i'd like to get this sorted before I finish the decorating....so....
who would be the best to call in and look at this sort of thing? as previously stated I have a lot of network points but there isn't one near my current bt infinity hub, can I get a second infinity hub installed in a different room to wire into the network?
who would be the best to call in and look at this sort of thing? as previously stated I have a lot of network points but there isn't one near my current bt infinity hub, can I get a second infinity hub installed in a different room to wire into the network?
I started a new thread but this seems to be more specific. Living in France, we have Sky+ which is routed to the bedroom by cable using the i/o port. On changing the bedroom TV the newer (6yr old HD LG TV now replaced in lounge) will not show any signal received so no Sky in the bedroom for the moment. I did try plugging in the old Samsung and that still worked fine, including the magic eye. si it has to be a problem inside the LG HD TV somewhere.
Now I am not a technophobe and have read through the above, but need a bit of clarification.
1. The CAT5 cable will be about 20 metres long to the bedroom (bungalow so quite distant) The cables seem to have ethernet connections and I see in one of the links above that the HDMI splitter has logically one input and two HDMI outputs taken from the output side of the Skybox, one going to the TV and the other via the HDMI extender to the bedroom via the CAT5 cable. The Neetbox HDMI output I presume then goes to the Portta which has an ethernet output and HDMI input.
If I've got the above right it is at the bedroom end where I am a bit confused. In my thinking the ethernet cable end need another adaptor to take the HDMI cable into the back of the TV, but how do I connect the magic eye, or won't that work with this type of system? The Neet extender I assume is to amplify the signal over the longish distance? Sorry for the lack of comprehension and a couple of - poor - photos show the ports on the offending TV.
Now I am not a technophobe and have read through the above, but need a bit of clarification.
1. The CAT5 cable will be about 20 metres long to the bedroom (bungalow so quite distant) The cables seem to have ethernet connections and I see in one of the links above that the HDMI splitter has logically one input and two HDMI outputs taken from the output side of the Skybox, one going to the TV and the other via the HDMI extender to the bedroom via the CAT5 cable. The Neetbox HDMI output I presume then goes to the Portta which has an ethernet output and HDMI input.
If I've got the above right it is at the bedroom end where I am a bit confused. In my thinking the ethernet cable end need another adaptor to take the HDMI cable into the back of the TV, but how do I connect the magic eye, or won't that work with this type of system? The Neet extender I assume is to amplify the signal over the longish distance? Sorry for the lack of comprehension and a couple of - poor - photos show the ports on the offending TV.
I currently have HDMI over twin cat 5 from the lounge to the kitchen. Works fine but I want to distribute to more TVs. As all have coax for freeview I'm looking at a HDMI RF Modulator. Something like this or this which distributes HD TV over coax. It needs a reasonably current TV. I think anything with a HD tuner is OK. You simply select an unused channel and tune it to the box.
Fore Left said:
I currently have HDMI over twin cat 5 from the lounge to the kitchen. Works fine but I want to distribute to more TVs. As all have coax for freeview I'm looking at a HDMI RF Modulator. Something like this or this which distributes HD TV over coax. It needs a reasonably current TV. I think anything with a HD tuner is OK. You simply select an unused channel and tune it to the box.
I use one that looks the the Edison one but with a different brand on it and it works well. Only small issue is a slight delay which just means you need to be patient with the remote. All my stuff in now in the loft inc sky box and TVs mounted on the walls, very tidy. My main tv is also a 65 OLED so I'd spot a quality issue. If you have an old TV with a HD free view tuner, you can buy a hd tuner box for about £15.Gassing Station | Home Cinema & Hi-Fi | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff