Making Cable tv and FTA stb channels work together for unavailable tv channels

vinay_kumar

Techie
Messages
124
Location
Mumbai
ISP
Airtel, MTNL, MTS
Dear friends,

My Hathway cable operator does not show many free-to-air tv channels despite requests. Yesterday I was shocked when the popular B4U Movies was removed from the network. 🙁 Then NHK World and many other nice channels were removed long back.

Sometimes the cable operators power supply goes off leaving the tv blank.
Here is an idea which I am using to watch cable and fta set-top box channels together and only fta channels when cable outage occurs.
So now B4U Movies, NHK World is back for me 🙂 along with other wanted channels.

Wiring diagram:


Now the fta stb needs to have an RF modulator built-in else you will need to buy an external RF modulator. My fta stb allows setting the modulator freq from UHF Ch21 to 69.
My local cable operator has left UHF Ch38 blank so I am using that slot to get the extra channels by setting as shown below.


[*]First find out blank frequency in your cable network using menu below in digital cable stb:








[*]Then tune to a tv channel on your fta stb and adjust its RF Output to the same channel as shown:








[*]The rear of my cable and fta stbs looks like this.



The Cable Out and RF Out have to be joined together with a "T" connector and finally given to the "TV Antenna In".


[/list]
T-Connector:


How the actual wiring looks:
 
Nice setup.Its by some standard (I dont remember) that CH 38 is left blank for connecting RF Output of STB to TV.
 

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