I am going to buy freesat and a recorder. How many coax cables would I need to run to receive and record HD?

Question

I would like to receive and record hd tv (when the recorders become available) I am currently renovating my house and thought now would be a good opportunity to hide the wires in the wall but I am not sure how many coax cables I would need to run in order to view and record full HD.

Can you help?

Answer 1

For a straight forward Free-view/HD system you would need 1 co-ax.

If you add a decoder/recorder  (like a SKY+ box) you will need 2 per box. This is because the box is effectively 2 decoders one for live TV and the 2nd for the recorder.

So if you had 2 decoder/recorders, you would  have to run 4 co-ax's to to a Quad (4) LNB on your dish.

If you ran a separate recorder from an o/p from your decoder you would only need 1 co-ax to the box but you would only be able to record the channel that the decoder was set to.

Probably best to run as much of the cable as you can get in now, while you are knocking the house about.

Answer 2

I would assume the following:

one coax cable from sattalite dish LNB  to your sat reciver.  

then one cable (HDMI/componet) from your sat receiver to your future recorder.

Sky plus/Sky HD utilise two LNBs on a sat dish - requiring 2 coax cables.

I imagine future free sat system will use this tried and tested technology for future freesat hd recorder boxes.