Any Cable TV Experts?

[1908_Cubbies]

Does anyone have any experience with long run cable installs? My house sits approx 1700 feet from the road and I am trying to figure out a cheap way to get cable installed. I checked with Charter and they quoted $2500 to install a line with me digging the trench and providing the conduit... This is more than twice what it cost to have electric ran!

I was wondering if I could just buy some rg11 cable and do the run myself since I can get it for a couple of hundred bucks on Ebay... Any suggestions? My goal is to be able to get high speed internet from somewhere other than Verizon.

Thanks!

[dralarms]

I don't think they will allow you to run it yourself. It's a money grab thing. besides at 1700 ft you are probally gonna need an amplifyer that they have to install.

[Farman]

What dralarm said. Cost me 3 grand for the run with an amplifier. I was going to do the run myself, but after watching the guys who did it I was glad I didn't attempt it.

[Mike.357]

why don't you go satellite? As long as you have a line of sight to the south/southeast sky you probably are good to go.

We used to have Dish and i liked it fine. But lost access to the land where my dish sat. My property has no line of sight to the proper part of the sky.

I am not sure about high speed internet through Dish though.

[Guest Swamprunner]

Ya, you need to run RG56, but alas, too far. I would go with Dish or Direct TV. I did. Got tired of Charter raping us.

[1908_Cubbies]

I am using a dish for TV now. I am trying to find a better internet solution than the $60 a month that I am pay Verizon for crappy service. DSL and fiber connections both stop about a mile from me.

[Wingshooter]

I live close to my parents. We both have the same DLP TV's and use HDMI cables. I have High Def. Charter cable. They have high def. Direct TV. Theirs is much better, IMO. My quality is good just not as good as theirs. I could be loosing quality in the converter box or my line, though.

They use Charter for their high speed Internet only, so I don't know about Internet from Direct TV

Direct TV does offer high speed internet, but I think it is a DSL setup. Not sure what the download/upload speeds are compared to cable... probably a little slower.

[oldogy]

My son in OH dug the ditch with a trencher himself and installed the cable to his house, about 1000' off the road. It probably depends on the local cable company whether they allow you to install your own.

So far as dish, I am on Wild Blue and have mixed feelings about it. When it works it is ok, far better than dial up. When working right I get download about 1000 kbs. It is subject to failure when a storm is to the SW. Nothing beats good DSL unless of course T1 or..........

oldogy

[Guest GhostHunter]

why don't you go satellite? As long as you have a line of sight to the south/southeast sky you probably are good to go.

We used to have Dish and i liked it fine. But lost access to the land where my dish sat. My property has no line of sight to the proper part of the sky.

I am not sure about high speed internet through Dish though.

I have "high speed" 2 way satelite through DirectTV/Hughes and have used it for several years, as it is my only option way out here in the sticks. At times, it is fast, but it depends on how many others are using the bandwidth at the time. For instance, I can tell a big difference at 4 am (fast) compared to 4 pm (slow). Sometimes it's not much faster than dial-up!

Hughes also has a "Fair Use Policy" that they don't tell you about when you sign up. (I found this out when my daughter played an online game all night.) They advertise unlimited usage, but the fine print states otherwise. If you download or use the equivalent of 250 mb in a 24 hour period, they restrict your usage and your connection speed becomes lower than dial-up for a 24 hour period, provided you don't download anything else during that period.

If you are in the same boat as I am and don't have any other "high speed" choices, then by all means go satelite. But if you have other options, I would definitely use them if at all possible.

Just my .03

[TripleDigitRide]

1700' is a pretty good distance. It can be done, but with that kind of distance, you will need to make sure your cable company uses better quality cable. RG-11/U, .412 or .500 cable is probably going to be your best bet.

With every 100' of coaxial there is a loss of signal strength. Since you need 1700', plus whatever will be run inside your home, there is going to be a considerable loss of signal strength.

You'll likely need a line extenders to help with signal loss, but these should usually be supplied by the cable company. There is also a chance that you'll need an amplifier once the cable has reached the home, but that all depends on the final signal strength. If you do need an amplifier, make sure it's a broadband version. This will help increase the signal across the entire frequency spectrum.

[Guest 2HOW]

If you run Ariel it will take an amplifier and you can use RG11 . The cable co. will want to go underground and use a thicker cable to keep the signal loss down. Most taps (the thing on the pole that you're cable is hooked to ) run out at 10/5 DBs you need positive signal to run a converter box but a cable ready TV can run all the way down into minus numbers with no trouble. If you can get positive numbers to the house you can use a mini amp to amplify the signal , but it has to be good clean signal or you will get crappy pics. . I built cable systems before and I can tell you that a 1700 ft drop is not practical. It will take an amp and another tap. Virtually building onto the existing system just to provide you with TV . sorry, it doesn't look promising.

[Guest DefensiveGuy]

I was in the TV Electronics business for 20 years about 10 years ago. Its been a while but the math is not to difficult to do. You will need to know the decibels (db) of signal from the CATV input, db necessary for a good quality signal at the tv, db loss in the cable, and db gain over db noise of any amplifier.

Then you have to consider how you run it, underground (requires a cable rated for this), overhead run and supports, if the catv co will even go along with this, is it your property you are running the cable over, etc.

Like others have said, i personally had rather have a sat dish. In fact that is what i have. And many days i wonder why bother with tv at all! But i also think that about cell phones, phone. Gotta keep the internet though!

[THE COOP]

I was in the same boat a few years ago but I owned a underground const. compay and were subcontrators for Comcast, I had a (spare) roll of underground .500 cable that I used one of my plows and direct burried the cable from the pole to the house and was done in about an hour. For your situation I would suggest going to your local office and talk to the manager in person and ask him if he would supply the cable if you do the construction, never hurts to ask in person. If not try to find the subcontractor who does the work in your area and maybe offer a cash deal for them to do the construction on the side. 1st choice would be aerial, pole to pole. 2nd choice would be to plow and direct burry, should be good for 15 - 20 years. 3rd choice would be to run 2" PVC the entire distance.