DIY: Wiring new rooms for HD DirecTV.

Idx86

Hello H&A -

I am just finishing my basement and am getting ready to migrate my HDTV. I'm moving the DirecTV receiver and DVR to the basement, but haven't previously had a "professional" wire the basement for cable.

Before putting the drywall in, I ran normal cable from where the HDTV and HD-DVR were going in the basement to the spot where the DirecTV wires come into the house. There's cables coming in from the outside hooked up to a splitter, and from there out to the living room and our bedroom. I don't know for sure, but I feel like the two orange cables which I assume are for the HD signal going up to the living room look different (thicker?) than the the SD cable going up to our bedroom.

1.) Can I simply hook up the cable I ran to this splitter, or do I need to pull these two orange cables down from the living room, re-route them to the spot in the basement where the TV is going, and then make the connection there through the wallplate?

2.) If I have to fish wire down through the living room, and then through finished walls, what's the easiest method for doing so?

I don't know if I'm explaining the question properly, so if not please let me know and I'll give it another go.

Chanus

I don't know if you're explaining the question properly either.

You're sure the orange cables are DirectTV and not, say, electrical?

The cable itself should be able to just be hooked to the splitter and then to your DTV box.

If you have to fish it through walls, a snake would be a good way to do that. You'll need to look out for things like horizontal joists, though, as you obviously wont be able to run the cable through solid wood.

Spam

What type of cable did you run?

I'm gonna assume that if you ran it originally for SD Cable TV, you'll have used a 75Ohm coaxial cable like RG6 - that's what we use in the UK for Satellite and Cable TV.

It will works fine for HDTV as well, so you should be able to use the cable you've already ran (unless I've assumed wrong).

One thing to note tho, if your Cable TV box has a pvr built in (like TiVO), it may require 2 input cables to allow you to watch other channels while it is recording - I expect it will if you have 2 orange source cables - so you should really have 2 coax wires ran to each room you're wanting to stick a cable box in.

Idx86

Spam wrote: »

What type of cable did you run?

I'm gonna assume that if you ran it originally for SD Cable TV, you'll have used a 75Ohm coaxial cable like RG6 - that's what we use in the UK for Satellite and Cable TV.

It will works fine for HDTV as well, so you should be able to use the cable you've already ran (unless I've assumed wrong).

One thing to note tho, if your Cable TV box has a pvr built in (like TiVO), it may require 2 input cables to allow you to watch other channels while it is recording - I expect it will if you have 2 orange source cables - so you should really have 2 coax wires ran to each room you're wanting to stick a cable box in.

Yep, I ran two cables in anticipation of needing one for each. I think the cables are RG-6, which a quick Google search yielded that to be the appropriate cable.

On another inspection, the orange cables are just the original coaxial cables from the house that the installer used - they don't appear to be anything special. There's some nuts fastening down the cable running into the various rooms which I assume I can just use a standard wrench or whatever to pry off.

I think I may have just gotten nervous and made this post because I am having friends over for the game tonight and was going to try and get shit done before they came over.

Spam

Sorted then, hook up the cables you've already run, shift your directv box and you're golden