In a moment of stupidness, I forgot to sort out a TV aerial point in the bedroom. Whilst I did manage to put in ample sockets all ove rthe palce and a pair of ethernet sockets I totally forgot about the TV

Pulling up the floor and running a cable is no longer an option as the house is full or furniture and nic enew carpet etc..

However, the house has an NTL installation, which seems to be a white box on the wall with 2 connections on it. One box in the lounge and the other in the bedroom.

The two boxes will obviously be connected by some means in order to get cable TV to both rooms.

The question is.... would it be possible to use this wiring to provide a link to the TV aerial downstairs?

Another option is to run a wire up the outside of the house but I really dont want to be doing that if I can avoid it.

When I had my sky installed the engineer looked at the ntl box and reckoned that if we put a normal rf connector on one end of the cable we should be able to get normal tv channels through it. Certainly worth a try as I havent bothered yet

Just what I was thinking.

As long as the NTL cable is still connected to the junction box in the street you can get analogue tv from it. Depending on the area, you should get 1,2,ITV, CH4 and 5. You maybe lucky and get some others as well. You may also get FM radio.

Oh now that is interesting.

Previous owners had an NTL subscription so it may still be connected.

depends as to what your TV can tune to. Now of course those PC based TV cards are analog cable ready,, nudge nudge, wink wink

Where is the nearest arial point to it, could you run a trailing lead until you next decorate or have a proper move around. The NTL house cable is just co-ax so should be ok, however the stuff in the plast place i was in had degraded quite badly in places.

Aerial point in the lounge is diagonally opposite to the upstairs bedroom. SO its about as far through the house as possible

I have no idea how the cable runs from the roof to the lounge though.

Is the bedroom just below the loft?

If so make a small hole in the ceiling and put a piece of trunking down to it withi wire in it and terminate it in a box. If you think that looks too offensive then you could cut a channel for it by hand. Then just connect both feeds to the ariel or put a spliiter in the loft.

had a look at the NTL boxes last night and they have a pair of screw connections on them - not a conventional aerial.

I'll take the covers off them this eneving and see if it it possible to terminate the existing co-ax in a conventional connector.

I believe the connectors are called F-Types and you can get adaptors for them as that is how they do the FM aerial feed.

had a look at the NTL boxes last night and they have a pair of screw connections on them - not a conventional aerial.

I'll take the covers off them this eneving and see if it it possible to terminate the existing co-ax in a conventional connector.

The NTL Box is an F-TYPE however maplin and co sell F- Typre to Co-Ax converters.

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=27877&DOY=17m8&criteria=F-TYPE%20ADAPTOR

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=27809&DOY=17m8&criteria=F-TYPE%20ADAPTOR

Thanks.

I assume there will be just one co-ax that is split at the ends to a pair of F-types at each end?

Also, can I use a TV aerial as an FM aerial? the recption on my receiver in very poor in this house and being able to tap into the second NTL connector in the bedroom would be handy (once they're connected to the roof top aerial)

Thanks.

I assume there will be just one co-ax that is split at the ends to a pair of F-types at each end?

Also' date=' can I use a TV aerial as an FM aerial? the recption on my receiver in very poor in this house and being able to tap into the second NTL connector in the bedroom would be handy (once they're connected to the roof top aerial)[/quote']

You dont need to plug into both f types gooch. Ntl boxes only ever run off one although both are live for some reason. Quite handy really.

The sky bloke told me all I needed to do was cut one end of an f-type connecter and attach an rf end to it.

With regard to the fm aerial. if it fits in the hole it should work fine.

You dont need to plug into both f types gooch. Ntl boxes only ever run off one although both are live for some reason. Quite handy really.

The sky bloke told me all I needed to do was cut one end of an f-type connecter and attach an rf end to it.

I was thinking of running the TV off one F-Type and the receiver from the other.

I was thinking of running the TV off one F-Type and the receiver from the other.

should work. I know both mine in the front room are live. When they originally installed it they only plugged in one and then split that cable under the floorboards to connect my tv and cable modem. an hour later I moved the tv to the other side of the room and plugged a seperate lead into the other connection on the box for my tv to plug into. Worked perfectly.

The two F-type connectors are for cable and FM respectively. If you look carefully you will see one of them marked FM and other CATV. Connect your radio to the FM socket and you should get all the national stations including the AM ones plus a few local stations. The stations are dotted all over the FM frequency range and NTL don't transmit RDS but it's a free way of getting up 30 radio stations without using an aerial.

The other socket is the CATV digital cable output. This carries digital TV and broadband services. It also has the normal terrestrial 5 channels carried on it so you can split off if directly to a TV and subject to re-tuning you will get the 5 channels. My advice is not to use ordinary RF patch leads with adapters particularly on the CATV side and those plastic splitters you can buy from Argos are no use either.

When making the connections use F-type connectors (crimped if possible and a low loss splitter suitable for CT125 cabling which you should also use. Doing it this way ensures minimal losses and it won't kill the signal strength at your cable box and ntl modem.

4 way splitter

F-Connectors

CT/FT125

It is not my intention to use the NTL TV service, in fact I wouldnn't mind being un-plugged from their system.

Our house has an aerial on the roof and a socket in the lounge next to the NTL socket.

My plan is to use a short co-ax cable to join the two together to allow me to effectivley connect a TV upstairs to the downstairs aerial socket.

Our house has an aerial on the roof and a socket in the lounge next to the NTL socket.

My plan is to use a short co-ax cable to join the two together to allow me to effectivley connect a TV upstairs to the downstairs aerial socket.

Hmm that's not possible but I do see where you are coming from. If the white box upstairs is linked off the one in the lounge you could disconnect the cable between the 2 of them and use that. Just be sure that the rising cable isn't feeding something else upstairs as well. If both white boxes are fed from the grey box outside, you can't disconnect a cable from the grey box without breaking the seal. I doubt NTL would notice though.

Connecting your aerial cable to the ntl white box in the lounge is a bad idea unless the ntl feed to the box is isolated from it completely.

It is not my intention to use the NTL TV service' date=' in fact I wouldnn't mind being un-plugged from their system.

Our house has an aerial on the roof and a socket in the lounge next to the NTL socket.

My plan is to use a short co-ax cable to join the two together to allow me to effectivley connect a TV upstairs to the downstairs aerial socket.[/quote']

cant you just plug into the ntl box upstairs in that case then?

The two F-type connectors are for cable and FM respectively. If you look carefully you will see one of them marked FM and other CATV. Connect your radio to the FM socket and you should get all the national stations including the AM ones plus a few local stations. The stations are dotted all over the FM frequency range and NTL don't transmit RDS but it's a free way of getting up 30 radio stations without using an aerial.

The other socket is the CATV digital cable output. This carries digital TV and broadband services. It also has the normal terrestrial 5 channels carried on it so you can split off if directly to a TV and subject to re-tuning you will get the 5 channels. My advice is not to use ordinary RF patch leads with adapters particularly on the CATV side and those plastic splitters you can buy from Argos are no use either.

When making the connections use F-type connectors (crimped if possible and a low loss splitter suitable for CT125 cabling which you should also use. Doing it this way ensures minimal losses and it won't kill the signal strength at your cable box and ntl modem.

4 way splitter

F-Connectors

CT/FT125

both my connections on the ntl box transmit the tv and cable modem signal.

cant you just plug into the ntl box upstairs in that case then?

NTL only transmit analogue terrestrial TV through their system.

The whole poitn of this little exercise is to provide the bedroom TV with a connection to the roof top aerial without laying cables etc.

I will probably just open up both NTL sockets and butcher the ends of the inter-connecting cable.

Well, it doesnt work.

The analogue signal makes it through but I can only get 3-5 digital channels upstairs. Tried a signal booster but that made the digital signal vanish all together.

Back to the drawing board :(

Well' date=' it doesnt work.

The analogue signal makes it through but I can only get 3-5 digital channels upstairs. Tried a signal booster but that made the digital signal vanish all together.

Back to the drawing board :([/quote']

Hard luck. Probably too many losses with all those connections

NTL have actually run their cable to the bedroom alone the outside of the house and it's hardly noticable.

If I can find some co-ax in black I'll probably just follow the route they took with theirs.

maplin do a low loss satilite down cable