I’m in the process of renovating a house and want to install tv points into the walls, which will then be covered. I’m thinking of installing a standard coaxial cable into trunking and using coaxial sockets in the walls. Is this the current way to do this or is there newer, more future proof cables I need to look at? Thanks.

Best bet if you can do it, is two cables [WF100] down to each point

That should give you quite a bit of scope, don’t forget to label them

Defo put twin cables in ,they could always be re-utilised for Sky+ rather than a normal aerial.
I take it the cables will be running to a central point in the loft?
You may also want to consider 1 or 2 extra phone points and also sinking in a HDMI cable or 2 if you intend to wallmount your TV at some point.
Surround Sound? then you may want to consider getting speaker cables either put into the wall/ceiling or run under floor boards to the corners of the room(s).
Depends how far you want to go with things ,you can even get Ipod docks that sit flush into wall and connect to ceiling mounted flush speakers.
The only limit is £ and your imagination.

Why phone points? Surely everyone just uses wireless for phones (a phone with a cord? Really?) so you only need one in the house.

Cat5/6 network cable (which you can use for phone) on the other hand…..

How do you distribute satellite feeds? Don’t you need acablefor each tuner (ie 2 for a recorder)? How many can you run from 1 dish and can you run a patch panel for them?

How do you distribute satellite feeds? Don’t you need acablefor each tuner (ie 2 for a recorder)? How many can you run from 1 dish and can you run a patch panel for them?

Well you’d need a separate cable for each polarity to enable recording and viewing of any combination
A switch in the loft and a dual LNB on the dish will take care of most situations

There are solutions now for running multiple signals over a single cable. No idea if they are any good, but the tech is a bit pricey at the moment

I did mine in CT125 rather than CT100. Thicker and better screened.

Consider also running a pair of cables to somewhere where you can keep a media player if you don’t want one under the tv. Run at least one HDMI cable from the media centre to each tv.

Also run speaker cable from the media centre, tv and/or stereo to speaker positions. Don’t forget surround sound speakers. I also have speakers in the kitchen, garden and bathroom. Use mains cable it’s MUCH cheaper than decent speaker cable and just as good.

+1 for cat 6 from broadband router (next to main phone socket) to tv, media centre, hifi and anywhere you might want a wireless repeater (upstairs? garden?).

Buy a decent distribution amp for audio and tv signals

Don’t bother with phone cable. You can get structured cables that contain AV, network, speakers cables in one. Many combinations are available but it’s not cheap.

There are solutions now for running multiple signals over a single cable. No idea if they are any good, but the tech is a bit pricey at the moment

coupler/decouplers don’t perform particularly well

I did mine in CT125 rather than CT100. Thicker and better screened.

There’s no real point in anything under 25m, you also can run into difficulties with the maximum bend radius in the wall boxes with 125

+1 for cat 6

@dlys – IMO the future is WiFi. We watch virtually zero TV these days as the whole family use streaming online/downloaded content. We’v gone from 7 TVs in the house to using just one. As an example I hooked up Apple TV (£100) to my TV and watch BBC iPlayer on the TV via my iPhone/Apple TV combination. We cancelled our Sky as it was costing £70 a month (Sport/Movies etc) as we could get the content we wanted elsewhere more conveniently and a hell of a lot cheaper.

You don’t need speaker cables routed around the house as you can stream your music over WiFi and play it through any set of speakers you want. Now that’s not HiFi quality but who needs that in the kitchen/dinging room etc anyway.

Why phone points? Surely everyone just uses wireless for phones (a phone with a cord? Really?) so you only need one in the house.

It’s for the TV services. I’d echo running a CAT 6 rather than telephone wire though.

Before getting too carried away with chasing out walls do check the structure is thick enough to take the depth you want. No point putting a 75mm deep chase for cables into a 225mm thick solid external wall. You’ll get damp coming through.

Well you’d need a separate cable for each polarity to enable recording and viewing of any combination
A switch in the loft and a dual LNB on the dish will take care of most situatio

More detail please – what’s that box – i can’t read enough off it to google and my searches for TV distribution so far haven’t turned up anything suitable (Sat to a single point/DTT and DAB multiplexed to multiple points is all i’ve found)? (link?)

It’s for the TV services

Does sky still require a phone point for every box? Surely they can do that over IP now (surely Sky boxes now have ethernet)?

IMO the future is WiFi. We watch virtually zero TV t

Good luck with that if you live in the city and your neighbours have the same idea.

CT125 rather than CT100

WF100 is copper screened rather than aluminium. Much better without additional thickness. Additional cost not large.

I’d echo the comments re CT/WF100, get a decent brand and good crimp or snap fit ‘F’ connectors, also I’d run two or three cat5e/6 cables to each point from a central zone where you could have your AV distribution housed. WIFI is ok if you get a great signal/not using too much bandwidth. cat5e/6 will handle HDMI via baluns,(HDMI cables get expensive over 5 m and the cheap ones aren’t always a good idea to plaster in) so SKY or other HD fed into every room and if you’ve coax to the same points you can use IR eyes to control it with.(remeber to label all the cables…..)
* All this can be done wirelessly using I-pad/pods/andriod phones etc but this is a relativly cheap way to ensure you can do most things using good old copper cable.
See also AVforums, but don’t blame me if the cost/your ideas spiral….
Enjoy playing.

Does sky still require a phone point for every box? Surely they can do that over IP now (surely Sky boxes now have ethernet)?

Hence my further comment.

I can see a lot of these Loftboxes[/url] but don’t understand quite what they do with the Satellite feed. I’ve no interest in getting Sky but Freesat has advantages over Freeview.

I’m thinking you need a Quad LNB to run a PVR in one room and Tuner in others (with direct cable runs. Alternative seems to be an Optical LNB but >£300 extra by the looks of things (and still need point to point connections only carrying satellite.

Thanks. If I use two cables to one coax socket – do I just leave the other cable free for now?

yeah, you can do

did I say, don’t forget to label then at both ends 🙂

Actually, would this be the place to ask for advice on FM aerial cable/connections? Mine is plugged into a TV wall socket which runs off a communal aerial system. It has a socket marked ‘FM’, but the reception is very poor indeed, and main stations are compromised by pirates at weekends. One issue does seem to be the cable i’m using though, as unplugging it often improves things somewhat, although you have to dance around with it above your head to get a good signal. Not ideal. Could things be improved with a better type of cable?

I suspect that the cable isn’t actually connected at the other end

What, on my radio?

One thing I notice, which may point to unsuitable cable, is that when my computer is on, there is a lot of static nois on the radio. When it turns off, the noise stops. So the aerial is picking up interference from the computer’s fans maybe?

What, on my radio?

More likely on the FM socket – either
– there’s nothing connected to the back of it or
– there’s a cable that runs somewhere but isn’t actually connected to an FM aerial on the roof
– the cable is broken/damaged by water/age
– it’s not amplified and there are too many flats connected to it

Your computer fan is badly screened and is creating some noise in the FM frequency range. Without an aerial giving a stronger signal from elsewhere you’re hearing that.

Loads of buildings were done without any actual FM antenna

The wall plate may well be a diplexed unit where the TV and radio is fed into the same cable at the system head-end and then split at the outlet plate and corresponding outlets marked up.
If there isn’t actually a FM antenna attached at the other end, you may well get the symptoms you describe.

You’d probably be better off buying some sort of internal antenna than trying to get the landlords to look at and rectify it