Cat 6 or Sky Q?

[Chucklehead]

I'm in the very early stages of making a list of requirements for a new build house and have been pondering cat6.

I appreciate cat6 is versatile and can perform a range of functions, but I think it'd be wasted on me. I will have Sky in the living room, and would like to be able to take an HD feed to the kitchen and the master bedroom. It'd be good to be able to control the channels in each room, but there's not really any requirement to watch different channels in every room.

I may be mistaken, because I've read conflicting reports, but it looks like Sky Q and a couple of Sky Q minis would do all I need.. Do they stream a full HD signal to the minis?

[The Tea Boy]

Yes they will stream HD but not 4k from what I understand (have just ordered sky Q, being installed 24 august)

[Chucklehead]

Cheers. 4k not required in the other rooms so sounds good to me.

[rscott]

I'd cat6 cable the house, then go for Q using wired connections. It's much more stable when wired than wireless.

[_dobbo_]

One small note - my Sky Q boxes do not do a very good job of being wireless extenders.

I'll get full signal in the bedroom but frequently not be able to connect to anything. Turn off the mini box and I get a lower signal but a totally reliable connection.

So, in your position I'd be going cat 6 all the way. I massively regret not running more cables everywhere when we did our house.

[FlossyThePig]

How many years before $ky replace Q with a different system compared to how long a hardwired system will last.

[Chucklehead]

Thanks all for the help.

I don't really know enough about this cat6 stuff and want to avoid the expense of a matrix as the benefit will be completely wasted on me.

Would a 1x3 splitter from the sky box and a couple of HDbaset doodahs be the best option here? All I'd need is one (possibly two in case) cat6 cables run from kitchen and bedroom to the sky box in the living room.

If you've got any good sites for reading up on this stuff id appreciate it.

[_dobbo_]

I ran my sky box with a splitter for years. Only downside is that, of course, you have to watch the same thing in all rooms.

For me that was the main selling point of Sky Q.

HDMI extenders over cat5/6 are pretty easy to use - but if you're doing the cabling yourself is cat6 is harder to get right.

[Digitalize]

CAT6 with Sky Q would be the best bet, especially if your house is bigger than average.

If speccing a new house fill the walls with the stuff, in the long run its pretty cheap, and could save headaches in the future, you can't beat the reliability of a wired network.

I'd put 4x runs in to any room you knew could be a living room/cinema room type area, and 2x in to the rest. Partially for redundancy, and because it's a hell of a lot cheaper to do it now then once it's all built.

Edited by Digitalize on Wednesday 10th August 10:32

[VEX]

The basic minimum rule of thumb we use for installs is as follows.

For everything that has a fixed location, tv's, printers, desk top pc's, Cctv cameras. Wire with a pair of cat6's.

Choose a hidden Cat6 location at least one on each floor for future Wifi booster/access point. Then the wireless stuff can stay wireless reliably whilst the fixed location stuff is wired and not clogging up the wifi network.

Don't forget tv's are also smart so putting them onto the wired network would be good.

Hope that makes sense.

V.