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Question about video connections in Southern Walk

Discussion in 'Homeowners Corner' started by Jason Cox, Feb 14, 2018.

  1. Jason Cox

    Jason Cox New Member

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    I'm new to the neighborhood and I'm slowing getting everything setup in my new home. I've heard that most of the houses in this area were wired the same for the most part, so I'm hoping someone can answer this question.

    There's a wallplate in most of the rooms that has 4 ports on it. One for data, one for phone, one for cable, and another labeled "video". I'm a little confused about the video port. Should I be looking for an input somewhere in the house that would then be broadcast to those ports?
     
  2. poolabab

    poolabab Resident

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    I have never used it myself but I believe those will be used if you hook up a dish antenna.
     
  3. stoner

    stoner Active Member

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    Think of it like an unused video pathway. You can connect both an input and output from room to room.
     
  4. Jason Cox

    Jason Cox New Member

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    Ah ok, sounds like it could be useful. Thanks for the replies!
     
  5. L0stS0ul

    L0stS0ul hmmmm

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    We've been in the house for 15 years or so and I've never found a use for it :)
     
  6. Zeratul

    Zeratul Well-Known Member

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    Wait a minute... is he talking about the RG6 (round cable box) connection? If you use something like Openband or DirecTV that you need that for cable connections in the various rooms where you want cable TV. I am not looking at one of those ports now so trying to remember. When I went through the choices.. I remember picking multimedia ports in all the rooms where I wanted internet, TV and phone.
     
  7. L0stS0ul

    L0stS0ul hmmmm

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    It's the extra coax connections. There is a separate distribution box in the basement that has no source. For the life of me I can't find a reason for two coax connections at each multimedia drop. I would have loved two cat 6 though :) If I remember back when we did the selections it was for an option cctv package mcdean had. At one point in time I ran a vcr through that line but it got old having to go downstairs to control it.
     
  8. Zeratul

    Zeratul Well-Known Member

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    But Jason, can you confirm what kind of port you are seeing that is called "video". Is it a coax jack, or something else? But yes, all the connections have a termination point in the basement box. Depending upon which year your house was built, we all have similar boxes in the basement. But I never used anything except the phone, data and coax connections.
     
  9. Jason Cox

    Jason Cox New Member

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    Yeah, it's the second coax jack that I'm wondering about. My house was built in 2002. Are we saying that there's likely a separate box in the basement that I could connect something like a cable set top box and it would distribute to these points?

    Thanks for all of the replies everyone, I'm not used to a community message board that actually has helpful responses :)
     
  10. Zeratul

    Zeratul Well-Known Member

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    I have not looked today to verify yet, but all the coax feeds should be terminating in the same location. There should be a distribution panel for the Coax and if you are lucky, they are labeled/numbered. But like LOstSOul said, I can't imagine why you would need 2 coax connections in the same room? Not sure about a separate distribution box, I do not have one. The only other thought that this could be is related to the alarm system that Openband offered. Some houses had this wired as an option... I did not.
     
  11. Mr. Linux

    Mr. Linux Senior Member & Moderator Forum Staff

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    Back in the nineties when I lived in Fairfax, our cable boxes actually had dual coax going into them, and thus rooms were wired with dual-coax. I guess back then it was simpler to run a dual-coax system rather than figuring out how to push all those TV channels through one cable. Since these SW homes were built around 2000-2004, I would bet they ran dual-coax thinking that would be needed in the future.
     
  12. L0stS0ul

    L0stS0ul hmmmm

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    In my basement media box I have 2 distribution boxes for coax. One has white coax going in and the other black. In the various media drops around the house the top spot goes to the black distribution box and the bottom to the white. The MCDean coax distribution box in the basement was horrible so I've replaced mine with the black one and my signal more than doubled but that's beyond the point. The white box I've never found a use for other than redistributing a vcr or ancient replaytv box feed. The center coax in the box is the source for all the others.
     

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  13. Zeratul

    Zeratul Well-Known Member

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    Yea your box seems smaller than mine. I have to banks of coax wires like you, white and black. My black coax was connected to the right side of original box... but now DirecTV added their connector... the one that is hanging in my picture. The black wires feed the satellite signal to the DirecTV locations. I added some extra in my basement (blue) as part of my own expansion as you can see in the second image along with a 24 port Gigabit switch. I built an extra wood panel into the wall so I had places to mount the switch, power strip and other stuff as needed.

    Sine MCDean installed these wires for Openband exclusively, there never was a need for cable boxes with 2 wires... it was a closed system and Openband boxes never used 2 coax connections (for the source).

    LOstSOul, I think in your case... your extra distribution panel that is hanging is just due to the fact you did not have enough connections built into the main panel. And is that blue CAT5 also connected to that extra panel? It almost looks like you have both connections in that part in your hand. And next, I need to clean up my wires... it is always an afterthought.
     

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  14. L0stS0ul

    L0stS0ul hmmmm

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    The one that I'm holding in my hand is the one the openband signal goes through. I replaced the original with a higher quality distribution box. Signal was drastically improved. The down side was the box didn't match the mounting holes in the openband box so I just left it dangle. The white one is the original distribution box and the leads all go to the extra coax cable in the media. MCDean told me the extra coax drop was for CCTV way back in the day.

    It would be an option for sat tv to go into. I still have openband as we don't watch much tv. Once one of the online tv like youtube tv have all the channels we watch I'll be ditching coax forever :)

    Your install is much neater than mine. MCDean just shoved the switch into the box and didn't mount it. We didn't add any media drops to the house so I guess they went with the smallest stuff for our setup
     
  15. pauleyc

    pauleyc Member

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    Unrelated to the COAX, but every phone line in your house is CAT5E and has a combination rj11/rj45 jack. I yanked every phone link out of the distribution block and terminated them as network cables. My house had 14 phone lines!!!! I have internet everywhere now :)

    I did find a couple cables that weren't punched down properly but 90% were good. You just need a BIGGER switch.
     
  16. pauleyc

    pauleyc Member

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    And the twin coax was a leftover from the old cable days. Many systems used two coax cables to handle the number of channels.

    CCTV doesn't make sense .. unless you want cameras behind your tv ;)
     

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