TiVo Community Forums Archives - Using existing Arial wiring to redistribute Tivo

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Using existing Arial wiring to redistribute Tivo
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Posted by: forceword

Hi there,

I do all my watching through my Sky box and never through the aerial. My house has aerial sockets in several rooms including our bedroom. If I were to disconnect my aerial and connect my Tivo to the aerial socket in the lounge, would I be able to watch the Tivo by connecting a television to one of the sockets elsewhere in the house ? I am planning to use an IR extender.

I've tried a video sender but have not had a lot of joy.

thanks,

Liam

Posted by: B33K34

Probably. Quite possible you'll need to put an amplifier in somewhere if the cable runs are long (Keene.co.uk are a good bet). Try it and see - it wont do any harm.

Posted by: stevehaley

Somewhere in your house, probably the loft, there will be a distribution panel/amplifier which takes the aerial cable in the splits it up to go to each room. These systems are rarely bi-directional so you will have to locate the splitter and replace the input line (currentlly the aerial) with the sitting room lead (currently on one of the outputs).

Posted by: pizzaman

I do exactly this (I have NTL as the feed into the house). I split the final signal before it goes into the television and feed it into the internal TV coax that goes all round the house into 6 rooms.

Posted by: AMc

Is it possible to do this without disconnecting the aerial so intergating the Tivo RF with terrestrial RF?
I have no signal splitter/booster in place, just a downlead to a splitter that goes to two TV sockets.
Is there any chance of damage if I use a splitter/combiner to put the RF out of the Tivo and pipe it back 'up' the wire so I can see it in the bedroom?

If there's no inherent risk I'll try it, just don't want to fry anything :) !

Posted by: Paul Stimpson

AMc,

This has the potential to be a bad idea. You won't fry anything but you will be transmitting your TiVo pics all over the neighbourhood and this is also illegal and may cause interference to other people!

Cheers,
Paul.

Posted by: mikefgrant

AMc
What you need is a second coax to the loft. So, aerial goes direct to downstairs and into Tivo. RF Out from Tivo passes through terrestrial channels and also adds a remodulated Tivo channel. Pipe this back to the loft where you attach it directly to the link to bedroom TV.

Advantage is that you get all 5 TV channels + a Tivo channel in bedroom. Secondary advantage is that anything (eg DVD) that you attach to Tivo Aux is available upstairs when you hit Aux-bypass.

It is a pain putting in the extra cable, but worth it. Also, if you add Sky or Freeview or Cable, you can normally get these on their own RF channel, so this is then available upstairs too.

Posted by: AMc

Paul Stimpson -
Really? I wouldn't have expected the output of the Tivo RF to be powerful enough to upset anything with just the loop on the antenna on the roof to transmit. Very amusing :)!

mikefgrant -
1st problem - no loft access :( otherwise I would have a proper distribution system :(
2nd problem - all the coax has been buried behind the plaster by the builder who converted the house (old Townhouse). He stuck two lengths of coax to sockets in the front wall (lounge and bedroom) then routed them through the walls and then poked them out at 1st floor height. I've added the roof top stuff and replaced the front plates but his wiring is stuck fast into the structure and isn't replaceable. There's no cavity to speak of so no way to add extra cable.

The current system has
TV Aerial and FM aerial
> masthead diplexer> sat quality screened downlead> splitter/combiner>two (rubbish) downleads buried in the wall>diplexing sockets (TV and FM ) one in the lounge, one in the bedroom.

I was hoping to just double back the RF out and feed it back through the existing wires but it looks like I'm out of luck. Back to looking at expensive video senders :(

Thanks for the help

Posted by: Paul Stimpson

Hi,

I've never tried testing the retransmission theory but I used to work for a cable company and the RA were sufficiently concerned about the problem that we'd been officially banned from combining the output of our cable boxes into aerial systems.

There may also be an issue with the TiVo's output coming back into its input. Once again I've not tested it but I've seen several VCRs which produced really crappy output if the RF became looped.

Cheers,
Paul.

Posted by: pmehatch

Paul:
The RF signal, by the time it gets back to the aerial, will be very little to cause propagation. Additionally, the style of the Rx Antenna is not optimised for Transmission, therefore even less likely to cause propagation.
IOW, I wouldn't worry about that.

AMc:
Why not just drill a hole in the FRONT or BACK of your house for a new RF cable?
It is best to feed that into an RF distribution amplifier (available from Maplins etc). Without that, you'd be trying to compine two signals from your aerial which won't work.

- Antennae
- FM / UHF Diplexer
- downcable into Tivo,
- out of TiVo and into DA.

Feed the outputs of the DA: 1 into TV (for chs 1 - 5), 1 into VCR (for chs 1 - 5) and 1 up the new cable to upstairs (for chs 1 - 5 and TiVo).

Your TiVo will be available upstairs, and so will your VCR via the AUX input on TiVo. This way you are not sending the VCR output back to it's input which will cause problems.

Philip

Posted by: chrisjc

Can I just point out that anything coming direct from an analog cable feed would be 10x stronger than what a TiVo would be able to output, so I think its a bit of a non-issue here.

Posted by: Tivophile

Having seen an example of NTHell's signal on cable, I'd never been surprised to see a three-phase current on the line :D

Don't trust the cable providers.

<DUCKS!>

Posted by: AMc

pmehatch - I'm going to give it a miss. There's no logical place to site the redistribution in the lounge. Realistically I'd want remote control of the Tivo too so a sender is probably the way to go.
Thanks for the thoughts anyway!

Posted by: stevehaley

I wonder if an arieal combiner would do the trick. There are boxes available that allow you to take ch20-45 from one source and ch48-70 from another and combine them into one downlink but you can use them as a filter as well.

IE you
1) put an open Y connector on the arial leed in the sitting room with one leg going to the Tivo OUTPUT and the other to the TV input.
2) Use one of the boxes above between the Y junction and the Tivo to filter the terestrial bandwith and stop static overwriting it.
3) If you need the terestrial into the Tivo then you could use another Filter on the input line to stop the Tivo signal looping back on itself.

At Ł10ea it would only cost Ł20 to give it a go. (see http://www.satcure.com/accs/page11.htm) for example diplexers.

No reason why this shouldnt work -isnt it just basic muxing?

Posted by: Norm

mikefgrant, you're a genius and I'm an idiot!

When I had Sky installed before I got my TiVo, I had a co-ax extension added to the RF-2 out on the Sky box connected to my kitchen TV with the digi-link to control it.

Well I've just moved the RF cable from the Sky box to the RF out on the TiVo, tuned the kitchen TV to channel 60 and I can now watch TiVo in the kitchen. Now why on earth didn't I think of this before!! THANKS!