connecting sat cable to prewired house

[ibooksrule]

when installing voom i was curious so as not to drill in someones walls if the house is new would it be possible to just find the existing cable line at the entrance to the house and cut that and wire the voom into that? or would there be a better way without drilling holes or fishing cable through walls?
thanks

[scooper]

The real question is - were any cable splitters used ? If so, then you will have to replace them with barell connectors before you can use them with DBS.

[ibooksrule]

how would you know if splitters where used?

[SimpleSimon]

You have to trace the wires, open every wall plate and check there, go into the attic and check there, crawlspace, etc.

You may find that you can use part of what's there - like the last "piece" up into the wall, but that it's too much trouble to map the WHOLE thing out.

[Slordak]

Usually what is done is the satellite is brought into the house with a new length of cable (through a new hole), rather than cutting the existing cable connection. This is preferrable so that customers can re-establish cable service without anyone needing to do any external wiring. Once inside the house (i.e. the basement), one can then run the satellite lines to a satellite switch and/or to the appropriate wires, since usually all of the jacks have their wires running down to the basement.

Assuming each room has a separate wire run, then there shouldn't be any splitters and things should be fine. If, though, there's just one wire for, say, the upstairs, then probably each jack in the upstairs area is split from another, and hence problems are likely to occur. Hence, yes, one can do some limited re-use here of the existing wiring depending on the condition of the wires.

[larrystotler]

What? I break open cable boxes everyday and use the house wiring itself. The cable company cannot legally restrict a homeowner's access to wiring that THEY own, and the cable co does not. The cable company doesn't have any legal right to lock a customer's wires in their box, regardless of whether they have service or not. This is why the phone company has 2 access panels. one for them and one for the customer. The cable companies are supposed to do the same thing.

[Guesst925XTU]

Usually what is done is the satellite is brought into the house with a new length of cable (through a new hole), rather than cutting the existing cable connection. This is preferrable so that customers can re-establish cable service without anyone needing to do any external wiring.


If someone is getting DISH/DirecTV/Voom, why would they worry about "re-establishing cable service"?

That doesn't make any sense.

[SimpleSimon]

Sure it does - lots of people use both. For example, D* NFL-ST, cable broadband, E* SuperStations, and HD from any/all of the above.

[larrystotler]

I beleive that slordak was refering to a customer wanting to have cable in the future. But like I pointed out, most cable systems and prewired houses now do direct runs to each jack, so they can be interchanged with no problems.

[ollie502]

Anyone ever heard opf a meter? Neither way is rocket science. What you normally do is the easiest thing to accomplish the application you are trying to accomplish. Good Grief!! :D

[SimpleSimon]

Welcome aboard ollie.

You need more than a meter, and the time involved in checking every outlet from every other (less the process of elimination of course) can still be excessive.

Remember - you still have to disconnect things at several points to try to isolate splitters.

[larrystotler]

Actually, a 12V power supply hooked to an RG59/6 cable and hooked to each jack on one end, and a volt meter on the other end would be 1 way to test. If a splitter is present, you should have more voltage loss.

[SimpleSimon]

Yup - that's more than a meter ;)

And I've never checked, so how much loss does a splitter yield? Maybe we could start a thread and see if it's feasible. There's so many different kinds out there, I'm afraid we wouldn't be able to tell, but it sounds like it'd be fun to play with to see. :)

[larrystotler]

I'm not sure, but I do know my digisat 2 will not light up most of the time with a splitter in the line.

[Strong]

how would you know if splitters where used?
Its usually pretty simple to know if internal splitters were used. If the number of wires coming out of the existing origination point (e.g. the cable box) is less than the number of TV's (+ unused coax connections) then at least one splitter was used. Or if the number of wires = number of TV's (+ unused coax connections) then no splitter was used.

Most (sub contract) satellite installers I know use every inch of existing wiring they can. They love to place their multi-switches in cable boxes. They call those jobs 'cake'.:) OTOH, they hate to see one wire coming out of a cable box going into a home. In that case, they know they will have to crawl around an attic, basement, crawlspace, etc to find the splitter and run new lines to it (after replacing the splitter with a multiswitch).

If the customer wants to keep their cable connections live, installers will then use diplexors to piggy back the satellite signal on the existing wires.

When I did satellite installs, I would first check for LOS and a ground. If those were OK, I would go ahead and hook up the receivers 1st. That way I was still reasonably clean while crawling around the customers home. While hooking up the receivers, I would look around for any exposed splitters or other 'home grown' type hook ups. If I saw any splitters, I would remove them and replace one of the lines with a barrel connector. Then I could figure out how to get a wire to the 'other' room while I was hooking up the dish.

[ibooksrule]

what is LOS and when you say barrel connector what are you talking about just so im clear. what is an easy way to find ground especially on a townhome or apartment but also on a house as well

[larrystotler]

LOS - Line Of Sight

Barrel connector - connects 2 peices of coax together

Your main ground is a copper wire underneath of the electric meter that goes to a rod going into the ground. On MOST houses, the elecric and phone should be in same place. The cable can be there or elsewhere, it depends. On Town houses, the Phone and Cable are usually on the opposite side from the electric meter. It depends. For apartments, yoy are usually SOL, so a grounded surge protector would be your best bet. Any wiring that comes from outside, phone, cable, etc should pass through a grounded surge to protect you equipment.