Now that the hornets have gone (a long story for another day) I will shortly be installing a dish with quad LNB and will have four runs averaging out to a total 80+ metres length or so. I need a white colour and it seems sensible to buy a 100m roll of cable.
I am gobsmacked about how cheap it can be - £16 or less on eBay. They quote "it's RG6 just like contractors use" .
Is there a range of cable qualities ? I'm happy to pay more for good quality cable as I don't plan to repeat spending a couple of days erecting a scaffold and climbing up and down it and all over the roof - not to mention fixing maybe 150 or so clips into masonry.
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Yes there are variables in quality.
The cheap price is for what they call shotgun cable (two side by side like a shotgun), or CT63, WF65. Its fine for shorter runs (say up to 15 metres) and bends well. Its not that robust tho.
4mm in diameter
CT100 / H109 / WC100 will do the job for your runs electrically, but use Wf100 if you have a lot of the run outdoors or a lot of bend in the cable.
6.8mm in diameter.
The diameter matters - you need the correct F connectors.
Its probably best to run WC100/WF100 from dish to a f plug wall socket in the house, and then shotgun cable from socket to appliance.
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Four runs?
Is that so you can watch two things and record four more?
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Presumably DE only wants to do the job once, so may as well cable up all 4 LNB outlets now; maybe one day he will want to feed 2 Sky+/Freesat PVR boxes.
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Yup dont forget you can feed a Sky+ box and a Freesat+ box from the same LNB.
or a sky +box and two freesat teles
or
or
The possibilities are endless, that wouldn't be there if you didn't cable all the LNB ports.
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Seconded CT100 for normal length runs, CT125 if it has to go a long way.
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>> Chapter and verse here with photos:-
>>
>> www.wrightsaerials.tv/articles/coax-cable-quality.shtml
Disciverd that site years ago via an SWL mag - one of the best demonstrations I know of the internet as a reference book.
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more than that, the rogues gallery is a comic masterpiece.
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Thanks all - I'll be looking in to wrightsaerials......
"Four runs?"
The house is in SW France and if you want UK TV it only comes via satellite - forget internet as it's dial up only. At present we have one dish and a single LNB leading to one TV. To be able to record a different programme to the watched one then 2 feeds to one location is best. Then if SWMBO is watching a soap when I want footie in another room it's an extra feed. I can't get a triple LNB and might as well fit a quad and extend the fourth cable to the "guest wing" so that at some future time any guest can view TV / listen to radio independently.
Most of the runs will be external so I will take note of your recommendations.
It's funny isn't it, that not too long ago we'd have been happy with contact with UK by crackly LW 198 or shortwave but now we want all the bells and whistles. HD though is a step too far for us in this situation. All the sets are cast-off CRTs.
As for French terrestrial TV, I'll be fitting a mega aerial for that too - it's all digital now and at the moment we can't receive a thing with the titchy existing one.
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>> All the sets are cast-off CRTs.
I've got a cast off wide screen (flat) CRT with Dolby digital surround, subwoofer. All going spare. Heavy TV though. And there's a stand. Free to anyone able to take it. And want it. It does have a Dolby surround in it - fibre optic input.
France is a bit far to deliver.
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>> As for French terrestrial TV, I'll be fitting a mega aerial for that too -
>> it's all digital now and at the moment we can't receive a thing with the
>> titchy existing one.
Worth reading what the wright's site has to say on that subject too - though French may not use same frequencies/encoding as we do.
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>>
>> Worth reading what the wright's site has to say on that subject too - though
>> French may not use same frequencies/encoding as we do.
>>
Mr. Wright's Aerials himself Bill Wright is a regular poster over on the Usenet/Google Groups digital TV newsgroup, a useful forum (in the broadest sense) for queries like this:-
groups.google.com/group/uk.tech.digital-tv/topics?lnk=srg
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It's looking like the WF100 cable is the one for my purposes. The maximum run is about 25m - the others are a little less. Apparently the 125 cable is very stiff, does not bend very well and is not even recommended for direct fitting to the back of a box due to possible strain on the fitting. Isn't this interweb thingy brilliant for instant information.
100m of white WF100 will set me back £32 compared with about £16 for the tatty stuff.
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..."Four runs?"...
Sounds like you'll be doing a proper job.
The Freeview recorder in the caravan is not a 'true' twin tuner.
You can record a programme and watch another live at the same time, but you cannot record two programmes at the same time.
I often set it to record a few things when I'm not there, and it's surprising how often I get an overlap.
A few people on the site have Sky, but there are limits for me in terms of need and expenditure.
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We had Sky from around 1995 when it went "digital". The main reason was for sport and in particular football. I've become a tad fed up with the antics of Premier League so called stars and become a cynical old man. So, Sky was ditched at the end of last season (May) and do you know - I don't miss it. Match of the Day and the odd ITV / 5 / BBC1 live match is plenty good enough for me at present.
Being £45 better off each month is a bonus and I've already saved enough to buy a top notch Humax box.
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ive been in two minds to get rid of my sky.
i have an octo box so 8feeds but at 45pm it doesnt seem good value so may cancel and just use freesat channels instead
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If you dont mind watching footy on your computer, you can get most matches free here. you dont have to install the plug-ins at the top of the page if you choose a stream that has "browser" highlited, some streams may need v-share or x-vid installing, but i`ve found these to be ok. Some streams buffer more than others, but i usually manage to find at least one watchable one! - better than nothing!
www.footballstreaming.info/streams/todays-links/
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Satellite cable - quality ? - Old Navy
