What are my options for adding Irish & UK Free TV channels to my B & B

We were asked this recently about adding the free Irish and UK channels to rooms in a B & B. The same could apply however, to a small hotel either.

Tom asks;

I run a B&B with a total of 7 bedrooms and my own living room. I currently have sky in my main living room and the Dish with an octo LNB

I used to have chorus for the bedrooms but now just have an Aerial for the 4 Irish channels.

I want to give customers the Freeview UK channels as well and get ready for the new Digital Irish Service.

Our answer;

FREEVIEW vs Free to air Satellite

I am going to make the following assumption - when you say freeview you mean free to air satellite

see free-to-air vs freesat to know all

WHAT YOU HAVE

Satellite dish with Octo - can use this to feed satellite channels to up to 8 rooms
TV Aerial for Irish with distribution amplifier - will probably be fine for Saorview

IN TERMS OF WIRING

You will need 2 wires going to every room
- If you do not have this you can use tv aerial and satellite combiner * 2 per room
You can re-use the Chorus wire as it will be fine (they use RG6 cable which is ideal)
- relevant as customers are often taking out sky or chorus and putting in once off payment systems

IRISH CHANNELS

Given you have a TV Aerial & TV Distribution amplifier all you will need is either

an MPEG4 Saorview TV
or an MPEG4 Digital Terrestrial Receiver to receive the Saorview channels
- this will give you RTE 1, 2, TV3, TG4, 3e, RTE News

Satellite Channels

You will need a set top box per room

Pick from range free to air

IRISH & UK on a single Box

It is possible to install a single box with a single remote to give you the Irish & UK channels with 2 feeds:

one from the TV aerial for the Irish free channels
one from the Satellite dish for the UK free channels

Range of combo boxes are found at

combo receivers

OTHER OPTIONS

1. BUILD A MINI CHORUS SYSTEM

You could build a head end (your own mini chorus system) with say 4 Satellite receivers and 4 Saorview boxes each set say BBC 1, 2, UTV, CH4 & RTE 1, 2, TV3, TG4

Equipment: sky satellite dish, octo LNB, satellite receivers (*4-8), Saorview boxes (*4-6)
Advantage:
- no need to put a box in each room
- only need 1 wire going to each room
Disadvantage
- limited range of channels in each room
- can have problem with interference between channels if you have too many boxes
- some boxes will switch off automatically when the channel is left unchanged for 3 hours (this will become a right pain the backside)

2. USE MULTISWITCH

This means a multiswitch to combine a satellite feed and TV aerial feed into a single cable and then run it to every room

Equipment: 80cm satellite dish, Quattro LNB, Mulitswitch, satellite receivers (per room), Saorview receivers (per room)
Advantage
- technically this is a very good solution
- you can have a box for satellite & saorview in every room
- can design for 8 or 16 rooms
Disadvantage
- higher setup cost
- more technically difficult to set up
- need a special satellite / tv faceplate in every room