Stange Aerial Routing in new property

[A2HGO]

Recently moved into a new house (its an old barn conversion not new build). Most rooms have an aerial socket but none have any signal.

It appears the aerial coax comes directly from the aerial, down the roof, wall and into the main living room.

Plugging this cable directly into a TV I get signal and most channels.

Plugging this cable into the wall in the living room, seems to then feed the other sockets across the property...but now I can't plug it into the TV in the living room and splitting it results in very weak signal to all sockets.

Theres an amp in the loft with 8-9 coax cables coming out of it, I assume somehow the aerial cable comes into the living room and then plugging into the wall goes back up to the loft.

Any reason why they didn't take the aerial into the loft from the roof?

Do I need a pre-amp in order to split the cable without loosing signal?


Dropbox - IMG_2625.JPG - https://www.dropbox.com/s/5ltvytvfk9s38y0/IMG_2625.JPG?dl=0

Dropbox - IMG_4070.JPG - https://www.dropbox.com/s/2doxabe63m2aoa6/IMG_4070.JPG?dl=0

 

[A2HGO]

 

[Bob Geldoff1234]

The previous owners probably had sky.The aerial would have gone into the input on the sky box and on the back of the sky box are two outputs.One would go up to the tv and the other plugged back into the wall to feed up to the attic amp.By using this configuration,sky tv would be able to be piped around the house to all the tv's.

 

[A2HGO]

Thanks for your reply.

I have a couple of unused Sky HD boxes, do you know if this is possible without a subscription? Or possibly using a Freesat box instead to achieve the same thing?

How would you change channel on the TVs in the other rooms with this setup?

 

[Bob Geldoff1234]

You can use the unused Sky box to make your set up work even though you don't have a subscription.The other rooms would have to have 'magic eyes' installed in the coax to send the signal back to the sky box to change channels.The amp in the loft would have to have 'digital bypass' built in for this to work.Also you need to go into the sky boxes setup configuration secret page.When you have general settings listed 1-8 instead of pressing the relevant number enter '001'.This will get you into the secret menu where you can turn power to magic eyes on or off and alot of other settings that you cannot usually access. This is all assuming that you want to watch sky channels around the house.For ordinary tv you just use the relevant tv's remote to flick through 1,2,3 etc.

 

[littlespark]

Would be less hassle to go with SkyQ multiroom.

The previous owners maybe had an amp/splitter in the living room with one output going to the TV, and the other going into the wall.

Is it a freeview aerial, or one left up there from days before digital

 

[Octopus]

Maybe get a local tv / Satilite installer to advise and set up a system for you ....

 

[Baddegg]

Wi-fi n Netflix keeps everyone quiet in my house..

 

[A2HGO]

Many thanks for your reply’s. We’ve been living solely off Netflix for the past 3 months but could do with getting this sorted.

Don’t want to pay a sky subscription really as we’ve had it before and only ended up watching the freeview channels so cancelled.

It’s a digital aerial on the roof, quite a good one I’m told.

Pretty sure the guy had sky before, I’ll hook up one of our spare boxes and see how that works out.

Thanks again

 

[StephenRowley]

Not the greatest expert on AV but

Surly the simple solution is to install a loft aerial and plug that into the input on the amp input the loft and plug the current input into one of the output on the loft amp.

Or reroute the existing roof aerial into the loft and contact that to the amps input.

I believe the best aerial amps have variable gain for each outlet which you can then adjust to achieve the right signal level for each socket.

 

[GeorgeCooke]

Is it a freeview aerial, or one left up there from days before digital

No such thing. A TV aerial is the same whether it is used for analogue or Freeview.

 

[GeorgeCooke]

It’s a digital aerial on the roof, quite a good one I’m told.

No such thing as a digital aerial. It's a TV aerial pure and simple.

 

[GeorgeCooke]

Not the greatest expert on AV but

Surly the simple solution is to install a loft aerial and plug that into the input on the amp input the loft and plug the current input into one of the output on the loft amp.

A loft aerial may not work. Aerials are installed outside for a reason.

Or reroute the existing roof aerial into the loft and contact that to the amps input.

Now that is a much more sensible idea.

I believe the best aerial amps have variable gain for each outlet which you can then adjust to achieve the right signal level for each socket.

Never seen one like that.

 

[littlespark]

Old aerials.... and old cable for that matter cannot pick up and carry a decent signal.
True, maybe you can get a picture in a good area, but most of the time you need an amplifier, even with new equipment.

Sometimes loft aerials are a must. Some places don’t allow aerials or satellite dishes to be seen. Heritage areas etc.
Sorry OP for taking this thread off at a tangent.

 

[StephenRowley]

Pretty much all the new build I see have there aerial in the loft but I would agree aerial outside is preferred for best signal strength.