WIll my cable connection work with dbox?

[sjnw2003]

Hi all,

I am about to buy a Dbox2 and was wondering if it will work with my cable connection. Here goes :

A family member owned my current house about 2-3 years ago. He had NTL cable. It was analogue I think.

He moved out and rented the house to someone. They didn't have cable (they didn't even have a phone!!).

I have bought the house. The cable point is in the living room. I have made up a quick cable (F connector to Coax plug) and connected to my TV (which can scan both UHF and Analogue Cable). The TV has scanned and found lots of channels that wouldn't lock (very scrambled, wavy picture but defo saw the UKTV Gold logo and the Virgin logo whilst it was scanning). It has, however, locked onto BBC1, BBC2, ITV, CH4, CH5, Eurosport and BBC News.

This would imply that my cable is working in some way - thing is, is it possible it is just analogue or will the digital signals be present as well?

All of the other house on the street that have cable have a small brown NTL box on the front wall of the house. A "pipe" carrying the cable runs up from the street into the brown plastic box and then into the house from inside the box. My house is different - It has the "pipe" coming up from the street and (via a "bend" in it) the cable goes straight into the house - there is no small brown NTL box! Will this make a difference?

Any advice much appreciated!

[stevenpc]

think im correct in saying if its analog its a no go can you borrow a receiver off anyone to try
ive found that when you connect up to youre tv as you have tried you get the virgin logo chans very clear with the other chans also are clear includeing uk gold and news 24

[plasterer]

Just ask the Neighbours
If the got it you will have it
Failing that
Just Postcode check your area on the VIR*IN website .,....Paul

[sjnw2003]

Hi all, thanks for the replies - you can defo get digital on the street (neighbours have it) - I was just wondering about the cable coming into my house (it's a terraced street) as it doesn't have the same plastic brown box as next door (and the rest). Am I correct in assuming that if digital is available on the street then EVERY property will have both digital and analogue over the cable?

Also, what is the brown plastic box for? Does it matter that I don't have one?

[plasterer]

No Mate as above
If the street is turned to Digital
You will be to.........Paul

[breezybadger]

If your cable's connected, you're good to go, the cable line in this house was installed back in the day when Nynex ran the local cable TV before C&W, NTL & Virgin ever did, and it still works fine to this day. On the outside, there's just a plastic strip thing with a bit of sealant in the top, and that's it, no brown box...

[sjnw2003]

Thanks again for the replies folks. Couple more questions :

1. Although my neighbours have told me they have digital they don't really understand what I mean!! Here is the result from the Postcode checker for my address - Any ideas :

Good news, you can receive a cable service in your street.
This means we can deliver our service using fibre optic cable specifically designed to carry high speed internet, digital TV and phone. It's reliable, unaffected by the weather and the quality of service is not based on how far you live from the telephone exchange - unlike all other broadband providers.

2. I have a PC upstairs that does nothing but serve divx (and xvid) via a shared drive to an Xbox in the living room running XMBC. My plan is to buy two Dbox2's, one for the living room and one for the bedroom. Will I be able to a) watch the Divx movies from the server via the Dbox in the bedroom and b) record the Dbox stream to the server drive from both Dbox's simultaneously (all rooms have cat 5 in them feeding to a central router).