Option for extending sky multi-room?

[k.jacko]

Hi all,

since the N3 on cable boxes, i've decided to be a good citizen and am having Sky installed on monday.
Coincidentally (and very luckily for me) a friend is a sky installer and had one 'freinds and family offer' left, and so gave it to me.
So, I'm having free Sky HD box, 1 free standard box for multi-room, the full HD pack and ALL tv packages for £39/month for a year, free installation too.
Not bothered with broadband or phone, kept VM for that.

Now, i'm wondering if i can put another box in our bedroom; I can actually get hold of a HD box from my dad as he fell out with Sky, and/or a standard box from the ex (she has sky+ now).
I know it would cost me another £10/month for another card for multi-room.
I guess i could also use the RF feed from the box downstairs to upstairs with a magic eye attached.
I mention this because currently i've got some CT100 running from a f-socket up to the attic into a loftbox (for freeview mainly), which then distributes to each room upstairs (as well as the main room downstiars).
Could i effectively connect the sky (somehow) into the loftbox and have sky distributed to the rooms instead of freeview. I know about the "you have to watch whats on the box downstairs" routine, but that's fine.

Also, as i've only played with dvb-c cards, are there any legit options for putting a dvb-s card into a pc and having the sky feed into it so that the kids can have sky on their pcs?

Or are there any other options for distributing the feed around the house?

Thanks for any advice offered.

[Rick]

You can use the RF2 output of the sky box to feed into your loft box. If you plug your ariel into the sky box, you will get freeview as well as sky. And your right, it's only the channel the box is on that gets distributed. You need to check if the loftbox has a powerpass if your going to use magic eyes.

As far as DVB-2 cards, I have the SkyStar2, it needs a feed from the dish and is fine for FTA. It takes a fair bit of tinkering to get it to do any encrypted channels via c/s.

[k.jacko]

Thanks Rick.
With all the ball-aching i had with getting the dcb-c card working etc, i'm not gonna bother with 'tinkering'. Just wasn't sure if with a dvb-s card and a paid sub you could just pass ALL the channels through.

How will i know if my loftbox has powerpass? What is it exactly?

edit: I'm not getting email notifications of subbed topic replies, although it is set to do so.

[Rick]

Power pass allows the sky eye 9v signal through the amp. It may say on it, if not and they don't work you will need a digital bypass kit for each eye.

You can't get a NDS cam to access the card, so unfortunatley it's not possible.

There are a couple of bugs ATM, Brian is working on them

[k.jacko]

Right,
Sky HD is all fully functional.
What i've done is taken a feed from the RF2 to my wallplate, which originally connected into my tvlink loftbox.
I then connected my newly purhcased tvlink magiceye to the feed that came from the loftbox to upstairs tv. The red light on the magiceye came on, and i managed to tune to channel 68 to get the sky feed. BUT i couldn't use the sky hd remote to change channels.
So, i took both feeds out of the loftbox and coupled them together, effectivly creatings a single link from downstairs wallplate to the tv upstairs. The magiceye red light went out. I could still get the sky feed, but remote still wouldn't work.
Upon studying the config diagrams that came with the loftbox it looks like my setup is wrong. My quad LNB feeds directly to each hd box downstairs (we have multi-room hd). The diagram seems to have it so that the LNB feeds into the loftbox(?) or another device?

This is all a bit confusing now.

There are a number of different types of 'magiceyes' available, i'm only really interested in watching sky in my bedroom as a simple feed from the HD boc downstairs, not distributing it to all other rooms. So have i bought the wrong one?
I'm using CT100 cabling throughout and i've turned on the RF2 power on the secret settings on the HD box.

Can anyone help me out please?

[Robbo]

The LNB input doesn't have to go to the loftbox. It can do, to make wiring simpler, but since you have the wiring in place already, it doesn't need changing.

The red light on the magic eye comes on, because it gets power from RF2 or from some other source. I suspect that it was getting it from the loftbox.

Just to check, connect the magic eye straight to the back of the Sky box, does it get power then? If not, then that is the problem. If yes, then check the wall plate, is it of the isolated type?( capacitor)

[k.jacko]

Hi Robbo, I installed the wallplate myself and all the cabling, but i must admit i'm not very knowledgeable with isoated types etc. I just bought a wallplate, stuck the ct100 into it....and....err....well that's it really. It sits in a single gang wallplate along with a Cat6 RJ45 module. And both seems to have been working fine since day one. It originally fed the freeview feed into the tv.

[Robbo]

Basically, there are some wall plates that block DC voltage, and DC is needed to power the magic eye.

This may not be the case in this instance, but if you check as above you can eliminate it as a cause.

[k.jacko]

Aaah... so by plugging it into the back of the sky hd box and the red light coming on then i know the unit i probably ok. Which connection? the RF2?

In that case, it may well be as you say, because when i coupled together the 2 cables that originally went into the loftbox, thus creating a straight cable from:
HD box > wallplate > magiceye > upstairs tv....the light went out.

[Robbo]

Yes, only RF2 is capable of supplying power, RF1 is for connection straight to a TV.