Getting Sky to Another Room

Dirk Diggler

Dirk Diggler

Dirk Diggler

Soldato
Joined
6 Jan 2013
Posts
22,194
Location
Rollergirl
What's the easiest way to get Sky into another room? I have a Sky+ Box in the lounge, and I want to watch in the conservatory. I will run any cables necessary myself, but I'm wondering if I can run a cable from my Sky box to my TV aerial input so that I'm just using the conservatory TV as a remote screen sort of thing?

I could get multi room, but I know for a fact we will never be watching on both boxes at once.
 
You can do it the 'proper' way with an IO Link and TV link and run an RF cable through to the new TV so you can control the TV with a separate remote. Or you can run a HDMI cable and use the Sky+ App to control the box.
 
VincentHanna said:
Isn't multiroom just £5 a month extra? To be honest I'd pay that just for the video quality compared with running a horrible RF cable around the house
Click to expand...

It's £11.25 a month extra, and the conservatory is literally 5 steps from my lounge via the kitchen. I could actually point the remote to my Sky box when I'm sitting in the conservatory!
 
I found the rf solution to give a half decent picture but it was so much better when I went with HDMI instead, especially the HD stuff.

You could always run HDMI for the video and use a rf link for the remote if you can't be bothered with apps, or set up an elaborate system of mirrors to reflect the ir signals to the sky box.
 
Paul11 said:
there is a way to do it high quality, over cat 5/6 with a box at each end, but they are not cheap
Click to expand...

What boxes mate? A HDMI cable is gonna cost around £50 as I'd have to go underfloor then upstairs and back down... Just the way the route is.

I already have an Ethernet cable running into there.
 
String said:
Sky Multiroom starting to look like the cheapest and easiest option! :eek:

Thanks for suggestions, BTW.
Click to expand...

You're forgetting about the charge for the multiroom box and possibly the charge for the engineer to come install it since it requires a line from the dish to work.
 
Sky recently offered me multiroom for £6 a month. Always worth calling them to see what they can do for you.
 
You can get those HDMI cat5/6 baluns for a lot less than £100. I've seen Neet ones for less than £40 the pair. I'm not sure if you'd need two cat5e/6 cables though as most have two rj45 sockets.
 
I use a HDMI Splitter and 15M HDMI cable to get to the bedroom, I have a Harmony remote that uses RF to control the box from either location. Never go back to using RF as the picture is so poor in comparison.
 
The pair of Neet units plus the cat6 cables would be more expensive than HDMI, so I'm thinking a long HDMI cable plus a splitter would be best option as the picture and sound quality would be perfect over HDMI.

I'll need to suss out a more efficient cable route.
 
Tealc said:
You can get those HDMI cat5/6 baluns for a lot less than £100. I've seen Neet ones for less than £40 the pair. I'm not sure if you'd need two cat5e/6 cables though as most have two rj45 sockets.
Click to expand...

that was ages ago when they first came out , so i imagine they are much less now

ill have to have a read up myself , if its cheap enough i might do this myself
 
The baluns and also HDMI cable is very cheap on eBay.

Probably looking at under £10 for a set of dual cable HDMI dongles as opposed to the more expensive single cable ones. Alternatively pre terminated HDMI cables are sub £1/metre. This isnt going to be an expensive project for the OP.
 
Unless you know someone trustworthy who has first-hand experience of the cheaper baluns then I'd advise caution.

Watch for them advertising big distances but hiding the caveats such as limited resolutions or only with specific cable such as shielded Cat6. Avoid anything that takes all its power from the HDMI sockets of the connected gear. HDMI wasn't designed to power peripheral devices. The other thing to watch is if the baluns downscale the image for transmission. This might be less of an issue now but I had had it in the past where clients bought their own products for me to fit. There was nothing in the specs to say they used compression, but it was apparent in the image that some quality had been lost. This is still the case with wireless HD transmitters. I had a rep drop off some product which I tested. Even he wasn't aware until I showed him the compression artifacts, and this was on a £200 kit.

Whatever you buy make sure the company has a decent returns procedure and buy some long pre-terminated leads for site testing so you can rule out dodgy wiring/plugs.

As for Cat cable, steer clear of anything marked as CCA. That stands for Copper Coated Aluminium. It's the cheap alternative to pure copper but it's brittle and it has serious bandwidth limitations.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom