Extend coaxial during building works

[prado2020]

We live on the top floor of a three story house undergoing major renovations on the ground and first floor. Our superhub and TiVo are connected downstairs but currently we can only access TV via wifi. We can watch Netflix etc fine and BBC via iPlayer but cannot watch/record other channels.

As a temporary measure is it possible to run a coax able up from the ground floor? Ceilings are open currently as first fix in underway. We only need this to be a temporary solution until works complete. 

Or is another option the TV 360 I've seen mentioned. Not familiar with that or suitability to sort this problem.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[nodrogd]

I should point out that Virgin use specialised coax cable. The frequency spectrum they use is shared with Freeview Broadcast TV, Digital radio & also overlaps the 4/6G mobile phone spectrum. Any ingress to the cable from these signals causes noise that will disrupt your services, & if it tracks back to the cabinet all your neighbours as well.

Any modifications should be done directly by Virgin. Add to that an extension of more than a few metres will also affect the signal balance at your property. This can only be corrected by opening the street cabinet to make adjustments.

VM will charge you £25 to make alterations. V360 still uses cable tuners & requires direct coaxial cables (its the same hardware, just a different firmware). The non recording IP version (Stream) is not available if you already have TV on your account.

[prado2020]

Thank you for you reply. Very useful and it confirms we will not be hacking anything as a solution during our renovations. 

[Roger_Gooner]

The 360 is the latest TV box and a serious upgrade on the TiVo, so most people will want the 360. Another difference is that all boxes after the TiVo require a connection to the hub, and now is the ideal opportunity to run an Ethernet cable upstairs during major renovations. If you go for the 360 this will be a new 18-month contract but you won't pay an installation charge. As for the coax itself: you leave it in place and tell the installer that you want all sockets to be live so that you can move the 360 around or have a mini in the future.

[japitts]

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@Roger_Gooner wrote:

The 360 is the latest TV box and a serious upgrade on the TiVo, so most people will want the 360.

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TV360 is not really an upgrade on the TiVo, it is totally different to TiVo - the OS is fundamentally different, in much the same way as Apple & Android are different and neither are an upgrade on the other.

New customers don't get a choice, existing TiVo/V6 customers do - and would be well advised to research the differences to be sure the conversion would suit. A search of the forum's posts on this topic will yield many varied opinions.

[Roger_Gooner]

If you say that the 360 isn't an upgrade on the TiVo, like "Apple & Android", you are actually saying that they are roughly equivalent - which isn't so as you must know that that the TiVo is a very inferior box.

[japitts]

Ok, partly a fair point there - let's clarify. There's photos of the 3 boxes at https://www.virginmedia.com/care/tv-fault/which-tv-box 

TiVo refers as much to the software as the box type as the software. V6 & TiVo both run TiVo software, both V6 & TV360 use the same hardware.

The hardware that V6 runs on is indeed far superior to that of TiVo. The software between TiVo/V6 & TV360 is very different.

[Graham_A]

There is a danger of getting mixed up with terminology here.  TiVo refers to the OS running on the VM 2nd and 3rd generation TV boxes.  I would agree that the 2nd generation boxes, which are no longer supplied are outdated.  However the 3rd generation boxes, generally referred to as V6 use exactly the same hardware as that which the TV360 horizon OS runs on.

[Roger_Gooner]

Having reread the OP's post he refers to watching the TiVo via WiFi, so it must be a V6. In this case the 360 and V6 would be regarded as equivalent.