Distributing VM around the house

[Daveblackmore]

Hi, new user so apologies if this is posted in the wrong forum.

I have had VM installed into my house to replace Sky.

I have been using a loft box (Triax DDU112) to allow me to distribute the sky & standard TV signal around the house. The house is cabled with CT100 cabling all coming back to the loft box and the rooms where I have the sky boxes have wall plates with a triplexed output for TV; radio & satellite. (Labgear PSW132). That has all worked fine.

When I had VM installed I had the super hub and one Tivo box installed directly into my lounge. That is all fine.

I have planned for 2 other boxes to go into a kids room and our bedroom - but rather than having those installed directly I wanted to take the cables to the loft and use the existing cabling to take the supply to the other 2 rooms.

The installers would not run the cables to the loft (as it was too high apparently!) so just left me 2 reels of cable, which was fine. I have now run those into the loft.

I have connected the incoming cable directly to the tivo and that works fine.

However, when I try to connect the tivo box using the internal cabling it does not work - the tivo box says it is not receiving a signal. I have tried to go through the loft box and directly connecting the "internal" cable to the incoming cable with an f connector and it makes no difference.

I understand the CT100 cable is not identical to the VM cable but should it work? I did connect a short run (6ft) of the CT100 cable that I had to the end of the incoming cable and the tivo box was OK then. The internal cable runs are probably more like 30ft.

Might the problem be with the wall plates?

If its a signal loss issue is there some way to boost the signal?

Running the VM cable directly to the 2 other rooms is not easy as the TV points are both on internal walls so I will end up with visible cables running along the wall which I would rather avoid.

Any thoughts / ideas gratefully received!

Thanks

[jb66]

If back of the faceplate looks like this, it wont work well



If the back looks like this it can work as long as the f connectors are good quality



CT100 isnt the best but I've seen it work with virgin

[nomadking]

I'm not too up with the technical details, but it looks like a non-starter as it currently stands.

The DDU112 box doesn't split the incoming satellite signal into different outputs. It just passes on the input of each LNB from the dish. Each LNB input will go to just one specific output.

It might be worth matching up the input to the required output. Then if that works, it might be possible to use VM supplied splitters up in the loft instead of the DDU122 box. The incoming VM signal would be split in 2 or 3, and the outputs connected to the current output cables in the loft. The splitters can be linked in series, so that 2 2-way splitters can provide a total of 3 outputs.

Where I live is a house split into 5 flats. It just has 1 incoming VM cable. Theoretically the signals from that could then be split 10 ways to provide 5 BB connections and 5 TV connections. It would seem just a matter of whether your current internal cabling can deal with it and whether the incoming signal can be strong enough after splitting the required number of times.

Thinking about it you wouldn't necessarily have to run the incoming VM signal up to the loft as the first stage. You could use your current internal cabling in the nearest room to split incoming VM cable to feed up to the loft to act as the input to the aforementioned loft spitters. Same end result, different cabling setup.

[Daveblackmore]

Thanks JB66, it actually looks like this as its a triplex.

I will try removing the plate and just connecting directly to the cable, as I'm not using the TV & radio feeds in the rooms where I will have the VM boxes.

Hopefully get that done today and will update results

[Daveblackmore]

Thanks nomadking

I don't need to split the VM signal - I am happy just to take that to the 2 rooms i will have the other boxes in. I'm only using the distribution features for the standard TV signal going to some other rooms with just a TV in.

The problem was either going through the lost box, or connecting the incoming VM cable to the cable that runs internally, I wasn't able to get the VM signal at the tivo box.

I'm hoping its a problem with the triplexer faceplate causing the problem and blocking the signal in some way. I will try removing the faceplate and connecting directly with an f connector.

Thanks

[heero_yuy]

That tri-plexor will probably disrupt the return channel(s) that the TIVO and STBs ( and SH's) needs to use to talk back to VM central. These are in the low frequency band from about 27MHz to 60MHz.

As you suggest try using the cable directly without it.

[Daveblackmore]

Hi, took the triplex faceplate off and just connected the 2 cables together using an f connector and VM all working OK now.

Thanks for the help