Home AV distribution

[andyturpie]

Hi Guys,

 

I am halfway through house renovation and I am at the point where I am looking to pull all AV cabling through to a a central distribution point in the house (under the stairs)

 

What I have at the moment is:

 

A satellite dish that was installed by Sky, which will now become free sat (dormant at the moment)

Virgin Tivo box in the living room and a V+box in my son's bedroom

A BT telephone point (disconnected)

Virgin telephone point (still live, but no land line connected to it)

 

I am running TV points to most, but I will need some sort of amplified distribution unit to take care of it all. Now I know that the internal cables for Sky/Freesat/Virgin look like F-Type connectors and what I want to be able to do is if I decide to swap supplier for TV etc, then I just want to do some basic hot swapping of cables at this single point.

 

Can anyone recommend me a suitable distribution box (I presume amplified which will distribute Virgin/Sky/FreeSat around the house.

 

For the telephone sockets I am just patching in to my CAT6 network.

 

Any advice and tips most welcome!

[howartp]

Are you distributing the satellite/virgin cables (f-type) around the house, via the central patching point, or are you terminating them in the central point with the Sky/Freesat/Virgin boxes located there then distributing HDMI to the TV points?

 

With the latter, if you have your Freesat, Tivo and V+ in the central location, you can choose which to watch anywhere you like, whenever you like. Get a new x-Sat-Live box (I made that up) you just put it in the central point and can watch it anywhere in the house.

 

I want to do the latter, but I'm also looking at Sky Q once it settles down.

[andyturpie]

Hi howartp -I want to distribute F-Type around the house from the central point to sockets around the rooms which will have the providers boxes in them. I possibly won't mix and match services - as I am a current virgin customer, but if I want to move services say to freesat I have all the connections for all the services at the central point, which means that I just need to swap over the inputs to the distribution box (in theory)

[caffrey]

Could you use something like a hdmi matrix ? and distribute from a central point over HDMI instead ?

[achedgy]

Could you use something like a hdmi matrix ? and distribute from a central point over HDMI instead ?

This what I do, have an hdmi matrix box, connected to 4x TV's, sky box, media player and can mix and match as I want.

[andyturpie]

Could you use something like a hdmi matrix ? and distribute from a central point over HDMI instead ?

 

All the attic and 1st floor cables are in situ chased and plastered over lol, but did look at it and found it very expensive if you throw in running HDMI around as well.

[CAWJames]

I ran CAT6 to each room when I renovated, then I can use baluns or extenders to send whatever I want from the central point. I ran at least a pair to each room, once for net, one for extender or both for extender, etc, etc. 3 Unifi flying saucers take care of the Wi-Fi for everything else.

 

[sMUG Alert]I also ran ceiling speakers to my bathroom, kitchen and bedroom, and they run back to an array of pi's and amps and on to Logitech media server on my thin client based server in the garage(this also auto downloads torrents for my favourite legitimate content over night) I also have some Fibaro Z-Wave dimmers and switches conencted to another Pi and a touch screen in the kitchen(one touchscreen to rule them all).[/sMUG Alert]

Edited April 6, 2016 by CAWJames

[andyturpie]

[smug Reply] I'm doing the same - CAT6 to a wall mounted 6u comms cab under the stairs - will be buying a 24 port gig switch with PoE if enough funds once build is complete.

 

Audiowise, not running it around the house - doing a run of speaker cable from where my hi-fi separates will be based in living room up and across ceiling to opposite walls with phono plates.

My old bedroom will be my main media room where my main DJ set up and record collection will be based and any audio will be routed through my mixer to my studio monitors

 

I ran CAT6 to each room when I renovated, then I can use baluns or extenders to send whatever I want from the central point. I ran at least a pair to each room, once for net, one for extender or both for extender, etc, etc. 3 Unifi flying saucers take care of the Wi-Fi for everything else.

 

[sMUG Alert]I also ran ceiling speakers to my bathroom, kitchen and bedroom, and they run back to an array of pi's and amps and on to Logitech media server on my thin client based server in the garage(this also auto downloads torrents for my favourite legitimate content over night) I also have some Fibaro Z-Wave dimmers and switches conencted to another Pi and a touch screen in the kitchen(one touchscreen to rule them all).[/sMUG Alert]

[CAWJames]

I did 7.1 from my main stack, Sony AV amp to wall plates around the living room and a quad run of CAT6 and twin run of COAX to behind the corner mounted 48" TV. 2 feeds from sat dish and 1 feed from tv aerial come into the stack, then I can send what I need to the ports at the TV end, be it standard aerial for Freeview or dish feeds for FreeSat, depending on the TV that is hung up there.

 

IT, bringing our work home for 30 years

[VeryPC_Anthony_L]

My wife and I are currently looking at getting our first home and I am looking at the properties thinking so what would be the best way to wire this....

At least I know i am not alone with what I am wanting to do ....

 

BTW @CAWJames I also have the unifi flying saucers....

[CAWJames]

Raspberry Pi uniFi controller of course here I have the things breeding in my house