Getting set up with BT TV. Questions for those who have it.

JustAnotherSaver

Kurtis_Blue wrote: »

Are you 100% sure the bedroom cable is not the one that can be seen coming out of the splitter in the third photo?

Thick cable in from aerial, split to bedroom and one feed for lounge?

Now you ask, no i'm not 100% sure but just reasonably sure. I'll have to wait until it's daylight before i can see again, which will likely be the weekend with my work times.

From what i remember looking at yesterday...

* Wire from the roof (so aerial) down the house, through the air brick at the bottom of living room
* wire up through the floor in living room into that box in the 3rd photo.
* wire from sky dish in through the wall on the front of the house, level with where the bedroom would be



At the moment we're re-considering Sky.


We still have our Sky+ box at my mums house. Could we just bring it & use that or would it not work?

I don't know if the new boxes have different internals, but the one at my mums house was installed (2010) when the box needed to be connected to the phone line (i believe that is no longer the case - so i don't know if the new ones have some sort of wireless transmitter inside or whatever).

At least with Sky, the wire is already there in the bedroom, correct?

VisionMan

If your house is already wired up for Sky then go with them for TV (the box will still work). But if you have both a dish and an aerial there will be feeds for both somewhere. You need to find out.

JustAnotherSaver

Right well since it's going to be the weekend before i can see what wire trails where due to my work finishing times...

I thought i'd do it the other way & bring the TV from my mums & plug it in.

So to the bedroom i went. Plugged in the cable you see in the first 2 pics & set about auto-scanning for channels.

Right enough, the TV detected numerous "DTV" channels & radio channels & i was able to skip through a load.


Does this help answer the question any?

Is this a TV aerial that will work with a BT box? Or may there still be something else i need to find out?

Just checking.

VisionMan wrote: »

If your house is already wired up for Sky then go with them for TV

Not really that simple unfortunately.

Forgetting the above for a second (me plugging in the TV tonight), Sky may be the easiest to do, but it's £336/yr -vs- £60/yr. Huge difference.


Anyway i would guess since that cable enabled us to get tv channels that we should be good to go with a BT box?




Hopefully. Either way, the image was really poor. I know it's because i've been used to Sky with a HDMI cable but would the image be better with a BT box?

jessmist

I transferred from sky to BT last year and i am more than happy with bt youview.

VisionMan

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

Hopefully. Either way, the image was really poor. I know it's because i've been used to Sky with a HDMI cable but would the image be better with a BT box?

All boxes now use HDMI, JustAnotherSaver. And if you sign up for BT TV's (fibre only) extra HD channels the pictures are stunning. Far superior to my Sky HD box.

JustAnotherSaver

Sorry for being a bit of a div here & a case of needing the hand held...
But the fact that cable showed up freeview channels does this mean it will work with the BT box & we're good to go with that?
Just wanting to make sure before I sign up & shell out.

Side note: I'm not really bothered about HD channels tbh. Never have been. Extra money for a better picture when standard hdmi cable (with sky at least) is good enough? Not for me.

Kurtis_Blue

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

Sorry for being a bit of a div here & a case of needing the hand held...
But the fact that cable showed up freeview channels does this mean it will work with the BT box & we're good to go with that?
Just wanting to make sure before I sign up & shell out.

Side note: I'm not really bothered about HD channels tbh. Never have been. Extra money for a better picture when standard hdmi cable (with sky at least) is good enough? Not for me.

BT Vision uses the freeview channels via the aerial and your broadband for steaming.

You aerial enters the house and goes into the 2 way splitter in the lounge.

One cable exits and goes to bedroom.
One socket is spare for the lounge.
Both can be used for BT vision.

Fairly sure all new BTvision boxes are HD, so use the HDMI lead to connect to TV.

VisionMan

As Kurtis_Blue says, a BT box uses an aerial for viewing Freeview channels. but they also use your Infinity connection for the extra BT TV channels. Heres a list of what you will get -

http://www.broadband.bt.com/channels/entertainment/?s_cid=con_FURL_extrachannels

They will supply you with a YouView box. The standard price is £7.45 a mth, unless they have offered you a deal, of course, as you mention £5 above.

JustAnotherSaver

So the 'extra' or 'entertainment' channels (such as History channel for example, Discovery channel also etc) are actually streamed via the internet?

Not too sure I'm keen on that idea.
Plus if the powerlines are no good for us then id be hoping there'd be a cooling off period where we could cancel.

Thanks for the help given by all.

VisionMan

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

So the 'extra' or 'entertainment' channels (such as History channel for example, Discovery channel also etc) are actually streamed via the internet?

Not too sure I'm keen on that idea.

Why are you not keen, JAS?

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

Plus if the powerlines are no good for us then id be hoping there'd be a cooling off period where we could cancel.

Powerlines are actually a lot more reliable than wi-fi and work for the majority of people.