HDR1100s & distributed system

B

brummie exile

New Member
Hi

I'm new to this Free sat DVR stuff and would welcome some technical setup advice. I'm sorry if the background info is long winded, but I believe its necessary to understand my request.

When we moved in to our present property there was no digital TV, only analogue. When refurbing the place, I decided to instal a distributed TV system. We also had Sky installed and all has worked perfectly, allowing us to have tv in all rooms from the single aerial as well as Sky on tuned in channel. I also have DVD recorder in the system that allows me to view DVD's and record programmes from Sky.

I've now kicked Sky into touch and bought Humax HDR-1100s with Freesat. However, there are no aerial connectors or scart connectors on the Humax and I'm confused as to how to link this into my distibuted system. I appreciate I may have to replace the DVD, OK no biggie, but how can watch freesat on the tv's in all rooms?

Any advice would be appreciated, even if it's right under my nose but can't see!
 
You wouldn't expect the Humax HDR-1100s satellite receiver to have any UHF TV (aerial) connectors, although it hasn't got any scart connectors, it does have connectors that carry the same signals (apart from RGB), the 3 phono outputs (yellow, white and red), carry composite video + left + right audio, these can be connected to a phono to scart cable like this one :-
http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/scart-to-3-phono-cable-075m-l15aj
 
brummie exile said:
Thanks for this but it doesn't solve the problem, as there is no way to connect into the distributed setup
Click to expand...

The modulator connects in the same way as your sky box did though you will need a aerial splitter. Aerial to splitter in, one output to TV, other to modulator in. Modulator out to return cable socket. If you want to use existing magic eyes you need a modulator that replicates the Sky system.

Triax Tri Link Unit.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/TRI-LINK-Control-Freesat-Freeview-around/dp/B002R634DU
 
grahamlthompson said:
The modulator connects in the same way as your sky box did though you will need a aerial splitter. Aerial to splitter in, one output to TV, other to modulator in. Modulator out to return cable socket. If you want to use existing magic eyes you need a modulator that replicates the Sky system.

Triax Tri Link Unit.
Click to expand...
Brill!! I knew one of you clever folk could come to my rescue. Many thanks
 
brummie exile said:
Hi

I'm new to this Free sat DVR stuff and would welcome some technical setup advice. I'm sorry if the background info is long winded, but I believe its necessary to understand my request.

When we moved in to our present property there was no digital TV, only analogue. When refurbing the place, I decided to instal a distributed TV system. We also had Sky installed and all has worked perfectly, allowing us to have tv in all rooms from the single aerial as well as Sky on tuned in channel. I also have DVD recorder in the system that allows me to view DVD's and record programmes from Sky.

I've now kicked Sky into touch and bought Humax HDR-1100s with Freesat. However, there are no aerial connectors or scart connectors on the Humax and I'm confused as to how to link this into my distibuted system. I appreciate I may have to replace the DVD, OK no biggie, but how can watch freesat on the tv's in all rooms?

Any advice would be appreciated, even if it's right under my nose but can't see!
Click to expand...
I think we need a lot more info about your distributed TV setup - a diagram would be good, even if hand sketched and photographed.
brummie exile said:
When we moved in to our present property there was no digital TV, only analogue.
Click to expand...
Thing is, you are using terms differently from how we would. There is no analogue TV these days, only digital - albeit transmitted over the UHF frequencies that used to be used for analogue TV.

I have a similar arrangement (I think). I have the aerials down-linked to the main entertainment station (the lounge), and then returned to to loft for distribution to the other aerial points around the house. This allows me to inject UHF-modulated analogue TV (from, say, a VCR) and feed it to the other TVs.

This is now redundant because the quality of picture you can get on an analogue system is so inferior to the output from a digital TV tuner. All my TVs now have digital tuners for Freeview, and although they could be switched to analogue I only ever do so to monitor the exterior security camera (also injected as modulated UHF).

To do similar with a satellite receiver, you need one that has SCART or other analogue output to feed into a modulator. HDMI is no use for that.

(Edit: I appear to be late at the party)
 
That's very interesting! £180 is still quite a lot, but it has a lot to do.

I like the idea of not having to switch TV tuner mode.
 
Black Hole said:
That's very interesting! £180 is still quite a lot, but it has a lot to do.

I like the idea of not having to switch TV tuner mode.
Click to expand...

It's full HD, ideal if you have a AV receiver like mine with two zone HDMI out. You can watch one source remotely in HD independently of what you are watching on Zone 1. And you can record it on a remote pvr.
 
Many thanks to you all for your replies. It's really given me some food for thought. Can I also ask another question? As we've now moved from sky, can i tune in individual free-to-air progs that are not on the epg. i.e. Horse & Country (for the wife!) and is there any way to get sky atlantic?
 
brummie exile said:
Many thanks to you all for your replies. It's really given me some food for thought. Can I also ask another question? As we've now moved from sky, can i tune in individual free-to-air progs that are not on the epg. i.e. Horse & Country (for the wife!) and is there any way to get sky atlantic?
Click to expand...

You can add free to air channels to non-freesat mode. You can view but not record these on a Freetime box.

The parameters for Horse And Country - 11567 V DVB-S QPSK 22000 5/6

You cannot watch any encrypted content using the box (Including Sky Atlantic).

You may want to look at Sky's internet streaming service which does I believe include some content from Sky Atlantic.

http://go.sky.com/

Why don't you get an extra coax from your dish and retain the Sky Box ? It will continue to receive all FTA channels on the epg (including Horse and Country), your expired viewing card will add a small number of Free To View channels. Your epg will be littered with channels you can't watch, but you can add up to 50 to favourites to tidy up the epg. Recording isn't possible though without some sort of subscription payment.
 
grahamlthompson said:
You can add free to air channels to non-freesat mode. You can view but not record these on a Freetime box.

The parameters for Horse And Country - 11567 V DVB-S QPSK 22000 5/6

You cannot watch any encrypted content using the box (Including Sky Atlantic).

You may want to look at Sky's internet streaming service which does I believe include some content from Sky Atlantic.

http://go.sky.com/

Why don't you get an extra coax from your dish and retain the Sky Box ? It will continue to receive all FTA channels on the epg (including Horse and Country), your expired viewing card will add a small number of Free To View channels. Your epg will be littered with channels you can't watch, but you can add up to 50 to favourites to tidy up the epg. Recording isn't possible though without some sort of subscription payment.
Click to expand...
Many thanks for a very comprehensive reply. You managed to answer a number of questions after I posted this one! Once again, many thanks.
 
Hi Brummie Exile, I have bought the same model Humax box as you and want to do the same, distribute the picturet to TVs around the house. Did you purchase any of the above and get your system working. I am still not sure what to go for.
 
How much cost and effort are you prepared to go to, and what quality of result are you prepared to accept? How many TVs do you want to serve?

For just two TVs, there is little to no cost benefit of setting up a distribution system compared with providing the second TV with an additional receiver, and routing an extra coax from the satellite dish to the second TV.

To set up a distribution system of the type discussed in this topic, you need your house UHF (ie normal terrestrial broadcast TV) aerial system to be routed from the aerial to the place where the receiver is sited, and then from there to the rest of the locations in the house where the other TVs are - probably via the loft and a distribution amplifier (which has multiple outputs).

So what you would have is a UHF coax from the TV aerial to the main TV (lounge?), satellite coax from the dish to the receiver by the main TV, another UHF coax from the sender (see below) by the sat receiver up to the distribution amp in the loft (or other central distribution point), and separate UHF coax links from the distribution amp to the various other TVs around the house. The distribution amp also needs a mains supply. It might be possible to get away with just a splitter instead of an amp, but I don't recommend it.

If all this sounds like too much trouble and cost, don't even start.

As far as the sender goes (mentioned above), you need to decide what quality you want. A cheap analogue UHF TV modulator connects to the analogue video outputs of the receiver, and then to the "uplink" coax to the distribution amp. It also takes an input from the TV aerial and mixes that with the modulated output so that the uplink also carries broadcast TV. The quality of the picture sent will only be as good (actually, slightly less good) as the picture you get from the analogue connections of the receiver.

However, as mentioned in post 9, for less than £200 you can get a DVB (ie digital TV) modulator which takes the HDMI output from the receiver at full quality (to feed the local TV you will need either a HDMI splitter, or take the UHF from the modulator like the rest of the TVs). An additional advantage of using a DVB modulator is that, to view an analogue TV source, one normally has to select a different mode on the TV - but with a DVB modulator the output will be just another channel alongside the normal TV channels.

Once you have a distribution system in place, you can use it for other things too - eg security camera monitoring.

I haven't even begun to talk about feeding remote control commands back to the satellite receiver from wherever you happen to be viewing the output - that's another problem which does not exist if you simply equip each TV with its own receiver.

As an alternative, it is possible to distribute live and recorded TV viewing around the house using the Ethernet/WiFi network. This is the way I would go if I was starting from scratch, but I wouldn't be using Humax kit to do it.

PS: if you wanted to draw Brummie Exile's attention to your post (instead of waiting for him/her to just happen along) there is a way of doing it. See Newbies' Guide to the Forum (click).
 
Hi Black Hole, thank you very much for your informative reply.
I should have stated in the first place that we have the distribution system in place as you describe. At the moment we have a Sky+HD box connected to it by an IO link which we can't use on the Humax box as different connections.(we are ditching Sky as getting too expensive). What I would like to know is, if we go for the Triax modulater, can you tell me which cables go into what, Thank you for your patience.
 
Oh, I see - post 6 (you could have said so). There's a diagram in the Amazon listing that shows you exactly what you need to connect where, and I have no doubt that if you buy the unit is will come with complete instructions.

Note, however, that it requires to connect to the analogue outputs of your satellite receiver, and therefore suffers from the limitations that I explained above (low resolution picture, the need to switch the TV from digital to analogue in order to tune to it - and TVs will gradually drop analogue support as time goes on). As the HDR-1100s doesn't have a SCART output, you will need a Phono-to-SCART lead to connect to the composite video and stereo audio outputs from the HDR-1100s.
 
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