Home Cinema System Equipment set-up?

Soldato
Joined
24 Feb 2004
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3,137
Hi all

Wanted to get some advice if possible from anyone that might of setup something similar for their home.

I basically want to have sky in every room and being able to control the channel in each room independently. I believe this can be achieved by a sky multi room with possible magic eye control?

and

I also want to have two speakers in each room (4) with the 5th room having a 7 speaker suround sound setup. I want to be able to select music control via remove in each room, now ideally I would like each room to have independent control of music but if this is complicated then I dont mind if every room plays the same, as long as It can be controlled from any room.

would also like if its possible to connect the TV to the speakers somehow?

also all the main equipment like amplifier and boxes and cd players and dvd players need to be all in one main cupboard.

anyone have any clue how I can achieve this, I have already setup CAT 5 cabling and have been told that i would need a Matrix switches, but not sure on much else.

if someone has a similar setup and can offer some input or guidance I would highly appreciate it.

thanks all
 
For independent Sky channel in every one of the 5(?) rooms you'll need 5 Sky boxes. That's going to be one main subscription + 4x multiroom subscriptions. Most would consider that overkill. Is that what you really want?

Second, all the things you want to do with control and speakers would require some fairly extensive rewiring. This is particularly the case if you want a central hub for the equipment. Some CAT5e cable in the walls won't be sufficient.

Finally, you need to have a think about ease of use and reliability. There are lots of ways to skin this cat. I've seen people start projects like this as a DIY task with the idea that a couple of grand and a weekend's work will see it through. That usually ends in tears and a hotch-potch of cobbled together compromises to various problems that never really works right and just looks a mess. I say this from the point of view as a professional installer. But it's not some sales pitch. I'm one of the guys who often gets called in to try and salvage something from these disasters.

Did you have a budget in mind? If so, what is it?
 
Hi
thanks for taking the time to respond, appreciate it.

For independent Sky channel in every one of the 5(?) rooms you'll need 5 Sky boxes. That's going to be one main subscription + 4x multiroom subscriptions. Most would consider that overkill. Is that what you really want?

Ahh, i though it was just one box and you pay for the subscription and use magic eye to control the lot. If this is the easiest way for it to be set up then I suppose we would have to bite the bullet.

Honestly there is no budget and its flexible and I am willing to spend to get it done, but obviously we don't want to spend ridiculous sums of money either, certainly not on thing like gold braided cables and £10,000 amps and so on but on necessary equipment I don't mind.

I should just mention this is all for my brother and no me, I am student :)

thanks
 
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When you say you want to control music in each room. How do you plan to have the music stored? Will it be all on a centralised server stored as FLAC/MP3 files or do you want a cd player in your central cupboard which each room then connects to?

I think as a low (ish) cost solution my advice would be to get a couple of Sky boxes and then have some rooms share a box. With 5 at any one time are they likely to all be used at the same time? With box sharing it removes some flexability but they can be controlled with an ipad in each room. I’ll let Lucid give better details though as he knows much more than me. 4x Multiroom subscriptions would be £40 a month so as long as your brother is ok with that cost it's not particularly astronomical. If he wants all 5 Sky boxes in a cupboard though that requires extensive cabling sending HDMI cables around the house.

For Sound I’d probably have a server with all the music in your cupboard which would only cost a few hundred including large amounts of storage. Probably running Windows Home Server 2011 and then use SONOS Connect:Amps in the 4 stereo rooms. These are relatively cheap at £400 each and can be paired with whatever speakers would best suit each room. These can be controlled by an ipad/iphone in each zone and also have an RCA input to accept the sound from the TV if needed.
 
@lucid and Marvt74

thanks for your inputs guys, unfortunately have not managed to sort this out yet.

I think as a low (ish) cost solution my advice would be to get a couple of Sky boxes and then have some rooms share a box. With 5 at any one time are they likely to all be used at the same time? With box sharing it removes some flexability but they can be controlled with an ipad in each room. I’ll let Lucid give better details though as he knows much more than me. 4x Multiroom subscriptions would be £40 a month so as long as your brother is ok with that cost it's not particularly astronomical. If he wants all 5 Sky boxes in a cupboard though that requires extensive cabling sending HDMI cables around the house.

I think this is the most sensible thing to do and share a connections, but what would be the easiest way to implement this? I have no clue how i would control these via ipad as you suggested?

For Sound I’d probably have a server with all the music in your cupboard which would only cost a few hundred including large amounts of storage. Probably running Windows Home Server 2011 and then use SONOS Connect:Amps in the 4 stereo rooms. These are relatively cheap at £400 each and can be paired with whatever speakers would best suit each room. These can be controlled by an ipad/iphone in each zone and also have an RCA input to accept the sound from the TV if needed.

I have had a look into this solution and it would be great and most ideal for me but what have read several issues that might make me shy away. I have read that there could be network dropouts and various issues that might happen in a area where there is large amount of wireless networks and in the apartment there is large amount of wireless networks. I am worried that it might spend all the money on the sonos connect:amp and it needs constant rebooting and tweaking because of network issues.

so its possible to connect my tv to the sonos so that that I don't have to buy separate speakers for the tv? so each tv connected to their sonos system will have independent sound on of other tv/sonos in other rooms? I don't want to watch tv in 1 room and have the sound in all the other rooms lol

any help would be appreciated, thanks
 
Sonos is a great solution for the audio. Also, your fears about wireless should be set to one side. If you have all the boxes in a comms cupboard then there's absolutely no reason at all to use wireless. You'd simply daisy-chain the Ethernet connections from box to box and then one to the router or switch.

Sky has an App for Apple and Android that includes the ability to control a Sky+HD box when connected via Ethernet to the house network. Your phone or tablet connects wirelessly, and then the router relays the IP commands via Ethernet to the box.

The App will allow several boxes to be addressed independently. It's done by box serial number. There's a list. On set-up you select the appropriate box. It's quite straight forward but there are a few caveats.
* IP control isn't as direct (quick) as the Sky remote for channel surfing.
* Although you get the full TV guide displayed on your phone/tablet, there's no way to display the guide on the TV screen. This is also true for planner and any other onscreen info.
* If your phone/tablet goes to sleep or you have to use another app/take a call/send a message then you may end up having to reopen the Sky+ App. This gets a bit frustrating when all you want to do is pause or do a quick change channel. That's something to bear in mind if you're a big Twitter/social media user.
* Control relies on having a decent wireless signal in your room. If your phone/tablet can't connect to your wireless network then it can't control the Sky box.
* The App can't bring a Sky box out of standby. It appears that Sky+HD boxes don't have a Wake on LAN feature. You'll still need a remote control with a Sky Eye to do this most basic of things if you don't want to leave the Sky box on 24/7.

The Sky+ App has been around for about 18 months now. They have a lot of the bugs ironed out. But unless something radical changes I don't expect the missing features to be added. IMO the existing hardware platform doesn't support them.
 
Thanks lucid for the help :) :)

just a few things,

AUDIO SOLUTION

That settles it for me, sonos it is and I will daisy chain them as you recommended. But I wanted to output the TV sound through them as suggested by Marvt74, this is possible so that I dont have to buy separate speakers for TV and sound. I believe they have RCA input and this would involve me RCA running cabling from tv all the way to the Sonos in the comms cupboard and then speaker wire all the way back to the room where the tv is. Is that correct so far?

another issue would be, would i need any kind of signal booster for running RCA or speaker wire over from comms cupboard to another room? would i loose signal or get static?

SKY SOLUTION

So this would just involve putting all the sky boxes in the comms cupboard and connecting them to my notwork router wired and then using the app, as simple as that? and running HDMI cabling around the house? I am assuming that I wont need any signal booster of the sort for medium sized apartment?

also does the sky boxes allow signal HDMI spiting to share the tv picture? because one box would take 2 TV and another box will take 3 TV would this
be possible with sky boxes or need special equipment?

regarding the issues, I don't mind leaving them on 24-7 and I am hoping no too much bother about TV guide displays as long as its on the ipad. Only issue is how slow is IP control in relation to Sky remote? is it very slow? like 1-2 second delay? or its just a slight delay?

If your phone/tablet goes to sleep or you have to use another app/take a call/send a message then you may end up having to reopen the Sky+ App. This gets a bit frustrating when all you want to do is pause or do a quick change channel. That's something to bear in mind if you're a big Twitter/social media user.

If I understand you correctly, this means that if my ipad or phone has sky app open and goes into sleep, then I would press the power button to bring ipad out of sleep, but the application would still be open at this point, do you mean using the application at this point would mean it wont respond and would require closing and opening again the application?

In your professional experience do you consider this solution as workable and relatively "stress free" ?

VIDEO MORE ADVANCED SOLUTION

I am assuming a more advanced solution would be HDMI matrix switches and IR receivers and transmitters, via cat 6 cabling?

just out of interest what do you think of OCTAVA switches?

Id prefer a simple solution tbh and willing to accept them both as long as the user experience is comfortable and not annoying in any way. Because once the cabling is in the wall and sealed there is no going back, unless I can install some kind of cabling redundancy just encase i want to try the more advanced solution?

Sorry for so many questions and I am extremely grateful for your help

thanks so much :)
 
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Sonos with TV audio: If you're talking about plugging something (or several somethings) in to each TV and then using the telly to pass the sound out to the Sonos box then you're going to need to make sure all your TVs have an optical output. You'll then need an optical to stereo phono converter for each TV. This will give you the stereo audio feed required by the Connect Amp. You'll also need to make sure that the TV is passing out only stereo PCM audio. The adapters won't handle bitstream encoded data for DD5.1, DTS, or anything higher. Wiring up like this means that the Connect:Amp can live near each TV.

Also consider long term. What happens in the future if TVs no longer have optical out because it's all done with ARC on HDMI? Plan some contingency wiring to add a budget AV Receiver to act as a decoder/ARC interface.

HDMI over distance: Long HDMI cables come in two flavours. There's passive cables - just wire and connectors. Then there's active cables, which is a passive cable with a bit of electronic built into the destination end to correct for signal loss and timing errors over distance. Passive cables are generally fine up to 15m. Active cables are what you should use for lengths greater than 15m. They top out at about 25m, though there are some high-end cables that will run longer distances. In general though, anything more than 20m cable run will probably involve Baluns and Cat6 Ethernet cable.

If you are simply driving signal from A to B then you don't have to worry about differences in display resolutions and capabilities. The source and display will negotiate between themselves and that's fine. But once you start to distribute to several TVs with a mix of resolutions then you have to think a bit harder about handling the EDIDs. This is basically the list of capabilities. What happens is that the system defaults to the lowest common denominator. For example, you tagged on a little TV for the kitchen which is basic. Now you don't get Full HD on the brand new lounge TV. A matrix switch may or may not help you resolve that depending on what it does with the various source EDIDs.

Sky+ App lag: If you just hit pause then the box will pause a fraction of a second slower than using the remote. The lag builds though if you try to do a sequence of actions. e.g. your channel surfing or going from play to rewind to pause to play.
 
Thanks for the reply mate, very much appreciated :)

Sonos with TV audio: If you're talking about plugging something (or several somethings) in to each TV and then using the telly to pass the sound out to the Sonos box then you're going to need to make sure all your TVs have an optical output. You'll then need an optical to stereo phono converter for each TV. This will give you the stereo audio feed required by the Connect Amp. You'll also need to make sure that the TV is passing out only stereo PCM audio. The adapters won't handle bitstream encoded data for DD5.1, DTS, or anything higher. Wiring up like this means that the Connect:Amp can live near each TV.

What I was trying to achieve. I basically don't want to buy separate speakers for the TV and Music so wanted to know if both sources can share the speakers, I mean that if i change a chanell on the sky or tv, i would like the sound to come out from the same speakers as those used by the Music system, its not a question of money but having to install so many speakers per room. For example, I want surround sound with 5 speakers in living room that would mean I would need 5 speakers for TV and 5 for music, which is a lot. Also I need all the equipment in the comms cupboard. I was just thinking of running RCA cabling from the TV out over to the line in on the connect:amp in the comms cupboard. I know there is 70milisecond delay but apparently its not noticeable, i hope

The method you posted above, i assume is not suitable for getting sound out from the TV when watching sky or normal digital TV?? because its very interesting that you can plug a device into the TV and get sound out of it through the Sonos system. or is both possible?

Also consider long term. What happens in the future if TVs no longer have optical out because it's all done with ARC on HDMI? Plan some contingency wiring to add a budget AV Receiver to act as a decoder/ARC interface.

what kind of cabling would be required here? I will tell you what I have going to room A from the comms cupboard, for example.

I have VAN DAME studio grade speaker wire,
I have Cat 6A cable - For advanced Matrix switch solution if needed.
I have TV CAT SAT 100 coax cable
Ordinary coax cable for sub woofer(only to living room)
Going to add Active HDMI cable

so what else would i need for future proofing?

because once the cables are sealed in the walls, it wont be possible to alter them without a great big mess.

HDMI over distance: Long HDMI cables come in two flavours. There's passive cables - just wire and connectors. Then there's active cables, which is a passive cable with a bit of electronic built into the destination end to correct for signal loss and timing errors over distance. Passive cables are generally fine up to 15m. Active cables are what you should use for lengths greater than 15m. They top out at about 25m, though there are some high-end cables that will run longer distances. In general though, anything more than 20m cable run will probably involve Baluns and Cat6 Ethernet cable.

If i buy Active cables with electronics and the electronics die(which eventually they do) I would have to rip out the walls gain to replace the wires?

If you are simply driving signal from A to B then you don't have to worry about differences in display resolutions and capabilities. The source and display will negotiate between themselves and that's fine. But once you start to distribute to several TVs with a mix of resolutions then you have to think a bit harder about handling the EDIDs. This is basically the list of capabilities. What happens is that the system defaults to the lowest common denominator. For example, you tagged on a little TV for the kitchen which is basic. Now you don't get Full HD on the brand new lounge TV. A matrix switch may or may not help you resolve that depending on what it does with the various source EDIDs.

I want to try the simple solution first and I will try and keep all the TV the same resolution. If the simple solution is not adequate then i will try a more advanced approach with HD matrix.

Sky+ App lag: If you just hit pause then the box will pause a fraction of a second slower than using the remote. The lag builds though if you try to do a sequence of actions. e.g. your channel surfing or going from play to rewind to pause to play.

Its a good compromise to avoid going to an advanced solution of HD matrix and IR transmitters and receivers, will just have to be more patient. Unless you know an easy workaround?



I do have one BIG issue, In the living room I want 5-7 speakers and the sonos only can accept 4 speakers max, I know if you play the sound from TV/SKY through the sonos device it has a 70 millisecond delay which is bearable, If i wanted 7 speaker setup, I assume I would need separate amplifier and this apparently adds further millisecond delays that some people find annoying and noticeable. Do you have know of any possible solutions for this issue? and what are your thoughts on the 70 second millisecond delay being bearable?

There is also a lot of difficulty connecting sub-woofer to the sonos connect:amp from what i have gathered.

out of interest is there any other way to share the speakers without going through the sonos which does not require much complicated equipment?


thank you so much for all the help, much appreciated :)
 
What I was trying to achieve. I basically don't want to buy separate speakers for the TV and Music so wanted to know if both sources can share the speakers, I mean that if i change a chanell on the sky or tv, i would like the sound to come out from the same speakers as those used by the Music system,
For all the rooms except the main lounge all the sound goes through one Sonos Connect:Amp per room. So in each of those rooms you have a TV, a Sonos Connect:Amp, and a pair of speakers. The Sky boxes are in the comms room. Any local sources such as games consoles etc plug in to the TV. In turn the TV optical out via the converter connects to the Sonos. Any sound that would have come out of the TV speakers comes out of the Sonos/speaker combo instead.

So what you asked for is what's happening. Freeview sound, Sky sound, any other local source sound all go in to the Connect:Amp(s) via the TVs optical out. When it's time to play music you do so via the Connect:Amp in the normal way.

There no real issue connecting a sub to the Sonos Connect:Amp. Just make sure the sub has a phono input (normally labelled "Low level"). But it sounds like the only place you want to use a sub is in the lounge 7.1 system, so see below for the answer to that.


The lounge is different from the other rooms. You want surround sound. So you're going to need an AV receiver. So in that case don't use a Connect:Amp there. There's no point. If you have an AV Receiver then use a Connect, not a Connect:Amp.

The Connect becomes another source input to the AV receiver. You would connect HDMIs from the Sky box, a Blu-ray, games console etc to the AV amp. You would connect the audio out (optical/coax or stereo) of the Connect to the AV amp. The HDMI out from the AV receiver connects to the TV on the ARC-enabled input. This is how you get Freeview sound in to the AV receiver.

The TV switches between either the DTV tuner (for Freeview) or one HDMI input. This would be the one with ARC. When switched to this HDMI input then the TV "sees" whichever video source is selected from the AV Receiver. When it's time to play music you select the audio input on the AV Receiver that has the Sonos connected to it. You can switch the TV off. The music comes out of the same 5 speakers that it does for movies and TV etc.

If i buy Active cables with electronics and the electronics die(which eventually they do) I would have to rip out the walls gain to replace the wires?
It's always a risk with any cabling. If you have the option then run a decent sized conduit pipe. Make any bends large radius if possible. This is so new cable can be pulled through smoothly. Old cable can be used to pull through new. You should also include a pull string for when you just need to add extra cable without removing a previous one. Where bends are at 90 degrees then provide access panels because it's nearly impossible to pull cable plastic coated cables past a 90 degree bend inside a plastic pipe.

If money isn't a consideration then go for baluns instead of active cables. At least you'll be able to change the head- and tail-end electronics as technology changes.


I know there is 70milisecond delay but apparently its not noticeable, i hope

I do have one BIG issue, In the living room I want 5-7 speakers and the sonos only can accept 4 speakers max, I know if you play the sound from TV/SKY through the sonos device it has a 70 millisecond delay which is bearable, If i wanted 7 speaker setup, I assume I would need separate amplifier and this apparently adds further millisecond delays that some people find annoying and noticeable. Do you have know of any possible solutions for this issue? and what are your thoughts on the 70 second millisecond delay being bearable?
I don't think you're going to have much of a problem. The TV screen - or more specifically the processing involved in scaling the image and driving a flatscreen - introduces a delay in the picture. This first became apparent when early generation flatscreen TVs became affordable. Owners of home cinema systems started to find that their receivers 40 or 60 milliseconds of audio wasn't enough to correct the sound advance from cinema transfers. They needed anything up to 180 milliseconds. That's why AV Receivers now come with adjustment up to 200 milliseconds.

Some of the 70 ms of delay from the Aux audio input will be offset by the TVs own picture delay.

There isn't a Sonos delay issue in the lounge system for watching TV/Sky/Blu-ray/Games etc because the sound of those sources isn't going through the Sonos Connect. It's going direct in to the AV Receiver.

The only thing I'd recommend is that the Sonos Connect:Amps live in each room. The digital amp in the Sonos box isn't hugely powerful. Driving very long speaker cables to speakers that might in themselves be difficult loads (low efficiency/large phase- or impedance variations) just seems like a recipe for trouble. The other factor though is purely practical. If the apartment is close to wireless signal saturation then do you really want a big distance between the phone in your hand and the box it's trying to talk to?
 
Hi Lucid, sorry for the delay.

Once again, that so much for the write up, that made everything 1000x more clear now.
Just some small issues

For all the rooms except the main lounge all the sound goes through one Sonos Connect:Amp per room. So in each of those rooms you have a TV, a Sonos Connect:Amp, and a pair of speakers. The Sky boxes are in the comms room. Any local sources such as games consoles etc plug in to the TV. In turn the TV optical out via the converter connects to the Sonos. Any sound that would have come out of the TV speakers comes out of the Sonos/speaker combo instead.

Just wondering if there is any delay in processing using the optical to RCA converter + the 70 millisecond delay of the sonons connect:amp? I assume there is but its not going to be problematic, because of your explanations before?

Is this the converter any good or would you recommend something else?
http://www.cables2u.co.uk/spdif-opt...-p-1166.html?gclid=COfG27ftgroCFfMQtAod80gAIQ


The Connect becomes another source input to the AV receiver. You would connect HDMIs from the Sky box, a Blu-ray, games console etc to the AV amp. You would connect the audio out (optical/coax or stereo) of the Connect to the AV amp. The HDMI out from the AV receiver connects to the TV on the ARC-enabled input. This is how you get Freeview sound in to the AV receiver.

The TV switches between either the DTV tuner (for Freeview) or one HDMI input. This would be the one with ARC. When switched to this HDMI input then the TV "sees" whichever video source is selected from the AV Receiver. When it's time to play music you select the audio input on the AV Receiver that has the Sonos connected to it. You can switch the TV off. The music comes out of the same 5 speakers that it does for movies and TV etc.

Thanks for the explanations but just one quick questions, I know that HDMI ARC means that the sound the TV is producing is sent back over 2 pins that were free in normal HDMI to AV receiver. But if the TV is switched onto freeview, I am assuming the TV sends sound signal down the HDMI ARC which is connected to the AV reciever, but how does the AV reciever know to play the sound, I am assuming logically I would just pick the option on the AV reciver that says TV?

also could you be kind enough to recommend me very good quality AV reciver, rather me just pick a random one or most expensive one or at least a reliable brand?


If money isn't a consideration then go for baluns instead of active cables. At least you'll be able to change the head- and tail-end electronics as technology changes.

Unfortunately I have measured the distances involved and I am looking at over 25-30meters because of the long distances and not being able to drill in some places. This would mean that i will have to use Balkans as you
mentioned.

when you say Baluns, do you mean I have run two Cat 6A twisted pair cables with one of these devices?

http://www.tvcables.co.uk/cgi-bin/tvcables/hdmi-cat5e-cat6-extender-50m.html

also there is version that works with only 1 cat 6 cable

http://www.tvcables.co.uk/cgi-bin/tvcables/hdmi-over-cat5-extender.html

Shall i run 2 x cables or go for 1 x cable??????:confused:

but I have also read on many forums that baluns don't work very well with sky hd boxes? or not all of them
and only possibly the neet brand works and aslo some of these baluns don't work with some HDMI splitters.

Because I need to split the HDMO signal 2 way( 2 bedrooms) and also 3 way( main room, bathroom, kitchen)
I just need some equipment that works well with each other from the word go, really cold not care about price.

Could you offer any advice here please, not sure on what equipment to order and or comparability.

==================================================================================

Regarding the sky App+ and the delay, I wanted to build some redundancy into this thing, just encase the delay
is not acceptable and was thinking of running some RF cable from the sky boxes and using magic eyes with
amplified splitter" which is SkyLink compatible and using magic eyes to control the boxes. But one thing I am not sure about if you have 3 rooms linked to one sky HD box, can you use 3 separate remotes or are you stuck with
just 1 remove?

is there any other way around this without getting too complicated??? or is my solution good? I would really like to have one remove in each room if possible, even though they all control the same box.

If i implemented this, I am assuming its still possible to use the sky APP+ in conjunction with this?

the equipment cost is not issue, but I have read there is large equipment incompatibility with IR receivers and transmitters and sky boxes that require programming and all sorts of weird stuff.

or could i use one of these baluns?

http://www.lindy.co.uk/audio-video-c2/extenders-c181/hdmi-c184/hdmi-ir-cat6-extender-pro-40m-p6757

==================================================================================

The only thing I'd recommend is that the Sonos Connect:Amps live in each room. The digital amp in the Sonos box isn't hugely powerful. Driving very long speaker cables to speakers that might in themselves be difficult loads (low efficiency/large phase- or impedance variations) just seems like a recipe for trouble. The other factor though is purely practical. If the apartment is close to wireless signal saturation then do you really want a big distance between the phone in your hand and the box it's trying to talk to?

I am willing to accept your recommendation and leave the sonox boxes in the respective rooms, but I am worried that there might be wireless saturation or weak signals some places and would really like to have some faile safe measure in place before we seal the walls. What I was thinking is to install extra cat six cabling or Ethernet wire from sonos boxes in the rooms all the way to the comms cupboard and then to connect these wia a Ethernet switch and then connect one port of the Ethernet switch to my internet network? at least this way they will on a wired network just encase the wireless network is poor?

what do you think? is this even possible? worth a try?

===================================================================================

bye the looks of it, I am going to have to install to each room 2x more cat cables and RF cable, this means more
ripping out big chunks of wall :( :( :(

thanks so much for all your help and taking time to reply, I really appreciate it :)

and i thought computers were complicated :)
 
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It's probably better that we discuss this over the phone. There's quite a range of topics to discuss and it would be quicker to bottom it out all in one hit than typing several lengthy replies.

If you have Trust enabled, then I will send you my phone number. If you haven't got it running, then make those changes at your end and send a message to me with your landline number and some times to call. :)
 
Hi lucid

My trust is enabled, if you can send me your number I would appreciate it and appropriate time to call you :)

I have also sent you my number

thanks mate
 
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