Cable n00b - Questions within

Cemetery

Cemetery

Cemetery

Soldato
Joined
17 Oct 2002
Posts
5,899
Hi, I am moving house where finally there is cable available but I know very little about it other than it is fast and the tv packages with tivo seem pretty good due to only having had adsl before (with a max speed of 1.5 megs).

My main questions are:

1 - The previous owner had Virgin there already so there should be no need to dig anything up but I assume they deliver the boxes & set things up for you, is that correct?

2 - Given the above, does anyone know how long it would likely take from asking them to sort me out to it getting done. I have around a 2 week overlap of houses & would really like to not be without the internet when that period is over. If it is likely to be longer than 2 weeks, could I just order sooner without knowing things like the phone number etc etc?

3 - The cabling that has been left is a mess, with cables coming down from the ceilings in a couple of rooms, if the above is true is that something I can get them to sort out & tidy up considerably? (one or two of the cables are Sky ones I think but in the same place as what I believe is a virgin cable).

4 - I know there is virgin anywhere but does virgin have the same kind of functionality as sky multiroom & if so is it basically the same kinda thing of needing a 2nd box, more cabling & pay a bit more on top of the subscription?

5 - Are there any mind blowingly obvious (to most) I should know or do before getting it?
 
Had cable since 2000, so can hopefully fill in some gaps.

Cemetery said:
1 - The previous owner had Virgin there already so there should be no need to dig anything up but I assume they deliver the boxes & set things up for you, is that correct?

- That is right. They may visit to check outside but generally if you've had cable at a property before, they don't need to do anything outside apart from maybe working on the junction box on the side of the house. The engineer will bring the boxes with him.


2 - Given the above, does anyone know how long it would likely take from asking them to sort me out to it getting done. I have around a 2 week overlap of houses & would really like to not be without the internet when that period is over. If it is likely to be longer than 2 weeks, could I just order sooner without knowing things like the phone number etc etc?

- This varies completely on how busy your area is. Could be a few days for someone to come out or a few weeks. Best to phone up and get a rough ETA.


3 - The cabling that has been left is a mess, with cables coming down from the ceilings in a couple of rooms, if the above is true is that something I can get them to sort out & tidy up considerably? (one or two of the cables are Sky ones I think but in the same place as what I believe is a virgin cable).

- Yep talk through the engineer where you would like the tv boxes/internet to be and where you would like the cabling.


4 - I know there is virgin anywhere but does virgin have the same kind of functionality as sky multiroom & if so is it basically the same kinda thing of needing a 2nd box, more cabling & pay a bit more on top of the subscription?

- Not heard of anywhere, but a second box is just that. We have the HD recorder box in one room and a second non-recording box in another. They have the same channels on both. The second one will still need to be wired into a small junction box in that room. The second box is quite cheap.


5 - Are there any mind blowingly obvious (to most) I should know or do before getting it?

- Work out where you want things run and clear the areas so they can get to where they need to easily to save time. Also worth noting each device (TV or Broadband) wires into a box in that room. So if you only have TV and BB in one room, its simple. But you could have say TV in two rooms and BB in another which is what we have. Each box in the room then feeds back to the junction box on the side of the house via coaxial cable.
Click to expand...

Hope that helps.
 
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That is very helpful ta.

I suspect most likely we would have tv in both the living room and main bedroom & internet in an office & maybe one other room. So if we chose that setup would they would wire it up so we would have wired connections in those rooms & I guess wireless access throughout the house correct? If so, that is pretty handy :) Or would it be like my current situation where my office has a router & unless I want cables running along the floor it is the only room with wired access.

Thinking further Ideally I think:

Front room - tv & bb for xbox
Master bedroom - tv
Office - internet
Spare room - internet

would probably be the ideal set up.
 
The Superhub (wireless router) will be in just one location. So you can wire up to 4 devices into it directly and/or use the wireless. If you want it wired in another room, you will need to run a network lead to that room or use something like homeplugs if that isn't easy to do. So best to have the Superhub in the room that will be making the most use of the broadband or somewhere that is easy to run cables from :)
 
They'll run the wiring for the STB's and the modem/superhub, but they won't run any additional cabling for networking :)
So you can have the modem where you want it, but any other PC's will either need you to run wiring to them for the internet, homeplugs, or wireless adaptors.
 
I get a fairly good connection to our garage (about 50+ foot on it's own circuit) with our homeplugs*, but as 23jmz07 says they can be a bit hit and miss from what I can tell, based on your wiring and choice of homeplugs.

One thing I would say, is that the superhub from VM is not great at wireless, so you might want to look at getting a good separate router (and if you've got a decent router already, work out where you might need a stronger signal/want to run a wired/homeplug connection to).

I use a mix of all three technologies in our house, with wired connections to the main machines, and a wireless access point, and the homeplugs to the garage.


*IIRC they're a set of D-link 200mbs ones that give me about 60mb+ connection.
 
House is about 25 years old. My existing router is pretty old now, probably nearing the 8year plus mark but does its job on my currently poor internet set up :p
 
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