Share Blueyonder cable?

[nrishiraj]

Hi Everyone.

I have just joined the forums and must say it's very comprehensive and informative.

I currently have Telewest TV service, the main box is downstairs in the main living room. Can I possibly split the signal and share channels amongst different televisions in different rooms and watch different channels independently without having a cable box in each room? In other words can I tune into the frequencies of the channels and preset them to the tv and I don't want a what u see is what u get system.

Thanks.

[Rob]

to cable forum

There are ways to do a bit, but not all of what you want.

I don't know specifically about Telewest, being an ntl user however there are a lot of similarities.

Firstly some cable networks have a terrestrial aerial replacement feed for BBCs1 & 2, ITV, Channel 4 and Five. This works additional to the signals decoded by your set top box (STB). If your STB has a bypass fitted to it (typically ws provided with most analogue STBs, but not common on the digital services, you could set up your TV and video, daisy chaining the coaxial aerial out of the STB via the video, to the TV. That allowed you to tune the video to the terestrial signal and the TV to the STB cable channels.

The STB can only tune to one channel at a time.

It is against the terms of service to by a cable splitter so that the incoming cable feed is divided before the STB, and perhaps rejoined after it. The idea of the splitter being to allow both the terrestiral and STB signals to be visible. The problem is this can introduce all sorts of nasty interference into the cable network.

Short of your getting 2 STBs the best option to at least allow you to watch TV in two rooms is a digisender unit. This allows you to change channels, but obvioulsy only one channel at a time is output from the STB, so everyone in all rooms has to watch the same.

This one channel limitation is a bit backward given that with terrestrail you could tune the TV to sya BBC1 and video ITV. But that's progress!

[nrishiraj]

I have split the signal before it connects to the box, so one signal is at the back of my main cable box and the other is connected to my pc tv card. I have managed to pick up 2 cable channles (as well as channels 1-5), I've noticed I have about another 10 more cable channels including Sky Sports, Bravo, Trouble, TMF, etc...but these channels are not that clear, the audio is clear, but the picture is fuzzy. I reckon the reason this is happening is because my tv card is analoge and not digital.

How have I managed to pick up these channels without even having a box in my room?

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by nrishiraj

I have split the signal before it connects to the box, so one signal is at the back of my main cable box and the other is connected to my pc tv card. I have managed to pick up 2 cable channles (as well as channels 1-5), I've noticed I have about another 10 more cable channels including Sky Sports, Bravo, Trouble, TMF, etc...but these channels are not that clear, the audio is clear, but the picture is fuzzy. I reckon the reason this is happening is because my tv card is analoge and not digital.

How have I managed to pick up these channels without even having a box in my room?

Cable TV does come in analogue too ya know, if it were digital you wouldn't be picking up a thing. Your TV card isn't made to tune channels that high up in the UHF band - it can't handle the conversion needed to take them down to IF for proper reception.

Presumably you're aware that the more crap you connect to Telewest's cable the more chance there is of you breaking your own service? Along with possibly your neighbours. Just a warning that most TVs are woefully inadequate at the task of handling cable frequencies and they tend to bounce the signals back down cables interfering with other services.

You won't get any more channels from the analogue feed than you do now, it's a very rare TV that can handle the job that set top boxes were invented for.