Virgin TV multiswitch

[christaylor]

Hi, I’m a landlord of a single house and have recently completed renovations in which we installed all the rooms with media plates fed by cat 7 and coax cables from a central hub in the basement. We initially set up with Virgin fibre broadband since it’s by far the fastest on our street.

We have a new tenant who wants to upgrade the broadband and have the full bells and whistles Virgin TV package.

The first engineer that came to install the upgrades and TV took one look at the switches in the basement and had to get advice from his manager straightaway. For the broadband we have a TP Link easy smart Ethernet Poe 8+8 switch, which is pretty straightforward - should be no problems there.

However, for the TV we have a Spaun SMS 5806 splitter with 4/1 sat/terrestrial inputs and 8 outputs (which go off to various rooms). Virgin will be supplying boxes or mini-boxes for the rooms, but the problem is that the engineer was unable to get a signal to the rooms. I know that the system was tested by the electrician when he set it up, but he’s on a very long holiday and I can’t get hold of him now.

I hope that the engineer just hasn’t tested the right connection in the right room, but I guess it could be much more complicated than that. The Virgin engineer certainly was stumped! (as the landlord I haven’t actually been present for the install, but my tenant is almost at his wits end so, being a bit more techy and having paid for the new wiring everywhere, I want to get it sorted)

Does anyone have experience of this sort of  spitter setup? Or can spot something beyond my (limited) understanding? Another engineer is due to make another attempt on Saturday - so any suggestions most welcome!

Thanks 👍

 

[newapollo]

Hi @christaylor 

With my limited knowledge the  Spaun SMS 5806 splitter  is just for satellite and terrestrial TV and so unsuitable for VM, however hopefully one of the more learned members wwill confirm later.

[Ernie_C]

…. and, more importantly for TV, you can only have a maximum of 3 TV boxes with Virgin Media.

[christaylor]

Thanks. I expect Virgin have already advised my tenant of the number of set top boxes he can have. If not, I’ll have to break the news 😬 😉 

[christaylor]

Hmmm, I was hoping that the Virgin TV cable would utilise the terrestrial port on the Spain splitter.

If I need a different solution to split the Virgin TV input, does anyone have an idea of what we could use? With my limited understanding of these things, I haven’t found a splitter box that will work for a fibre optic coax input like the Virgin.

any ideas?

[nodrogd]

That splitter cannot be shared with VM services.

VM uses THE SAME frequency spectrum as Freeview & DAB radio. Any ingress from either will make the network unusable for anyone connected to it, be it for VM, Freeview or Satellite, not to mention disrupting the entire VM network segment upstream.

This will need a totally separate VM connection that is screened from any Freeview or Satellite signals.

[christaylor]

Thanks very much for confirming that I can’t use my current splitter.

Do you know of something appropriate to use instead?

[nodrogd · Accepted solution]

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@christaylor wrote:

Thanks very much for confirming that I can’t use my current splitter.

Do you know of something appropriate to use instead?

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Not that you can buy commercially. Anything on VMs network must be strictly to CATV standards, so VM should only be installing their own kit. Likely they will just install their own splitter & connect this to the current feed going to where it is required. If the feeds to the rooms are RG6 cables you should be able to get away with these being correct standard.

[christaylor]

Thanks very much for your advice - most helpful.

In which case we’ll get the VM engineers to do the full install without using the Spaun box at all. I’m order to avoid interference we won’t utilise the Freeview, DAB or Satellite inputs, and we’ll hope that the coax cables already installed are RG6 to carry a good VM signal. 🤞 Thanks!