Before proceeding with the repair work in the apartment, it is necessary to plan the design of future premises. An important aspect of this issue is the planning of the placement of furniture, interior items, as well as household appliances. First of all, this is due to the need to optimally separate the electrical wiring and install it in the right places. sockets, including television. To properly connect a TV outlet, it is enough to know its device, the general principle of operation and the installation procedure.
Coaxial cable device
The main difference that determines the difference between electrical and television outlets is the structure of the cable connected to each of them. If a standard electrical wire consists of two or three separate cores covered with insulation, which are connected to the corresponding socket contacts using bolted connections, then the design of the antenna cable is somewhat different.
Television coaxial cable is very easy to identify by its appearance. It is a fairly thick wire of circular cross section, having inside one solid conductive core made of copper. This center conductor is covered with a dense layer of insulation, on top of which is a shield of aluminum foil and thin steel wire. In most cases, PVC insulation is used as the outer protective coating of the cable.
Poor manufacturing or damage to any of the elements of the antenna wire leads to a significant deterioration in signal quality, so the laying of such lines should be treated with the utmost responsibility.
Let us consider in more detail the device and the purpose of the components of the tv cable:
- Insulation. It is made of a dielectric (usually polyethylene), and serves to exclude galvanic coupling between the conductive core and the screen.
- Screen. In any coaxial cable, this element is designed to prevent the radiation of a high-frequency signal into space. Its other function is to protect against electromagnetic interference, to which the transmitted signal is very sensitive. In addition, two wires are needed to ensure the flow of high frequency current, so in this case the screen is used as a second conductor. Such a cable is called asymmetrically shielded.
- Conductive wire. It is the main part of the design, since it serves to transmit an electrical signal.
- The outer shell, which is designed to protect current-carrying parts from mechanical stress.
As can be understood from the design of the cable, connecting it to a television outlet is connecting the center conductor and shield to the appropriate pins. To understand the features of connecting such wires, it is necessary to briefly consider the device and the purpose of the main parts of the television outlet.
It should also be noted that when laying the antenna cable, it should not be placed in close proximity to electrical wires.
When connecting electricity consumers, sufficiently strong magnetic fields arise around the current-carrying conductors of power wiring elements. Such fields can significantly distort the transmitted high-frequency TV/SAT signal. In addition, some household appliances have the ability to emit electromagnetic waves, which also affect the quality of the TV signal. And although at present there are fewer and fewer such devices, and almost all models of modern TVs are equipped with special filters that eliminate such influence to one degree or another, the possibility of interference should still be taken into account.For example, Legrand does not recommend placing power cables closer than 2 cm from the antenna cable.
As for the manufacturers of equipment used for the installation of electrical networks and information transmission systems, then, of course, one of the leaders in this market is the French company Legrand. Today it has representative offices in more than 60 countries of the world, and Legrand has been supplying products to our country since 1980.
Today, electrical goods stores offer a wide range of Legrand electrical and television sockets, switches, splitters, adders, amplifiers and other electrical products. The high quality of all Legrand devices has provided them with widespread recognition, but when buying such equipment, you should beware of fakes.
Types of television sockets
Depending on the purpose and use in the wiring diagram of the tv cable in the apartment, the sockets are divided into three main groups:
- Single. The most simple in design and common devices. Used to connect one TV to a splitter or antenna.
- Terminal. Used to install at the end plume - serial connection of sockets. This device should not be confused with single sockets. For stable operation of any of the Legrand TV sockets in the loop, there must be a certain wave impedance of the line, which creates a terminal TV socket.
- Checkpoints. They are designed to be installed in the middle of the loop. The design of such devices provides for the connection of an antenna wire to them from two sides. One of these wires is incoming, it comes from the previous device connected to the splitter, and the other is outgoing (used to transmit a signal to the next outlet).
TV socket device
The main parts included in the design of any TV outlet are:
- A tv socket housing (or printed circuit board), which is designed to connect an antenna cable to it. In a single socket, this part does not have any electronic circuits and serves only to ensure reliable contact between its elements.
- front panel. This element of the device design performs not only a protective, but also a decorative function. It can be chosen so as to best match the interior of the room. Depending on the purpose of the Legrand socket, it may contain additional outputs, such as SAT and R. The TV-R-SAT socket is connected using one cable coming from a special adder.
- Caliper. Serves for fastening all elements of the socket design to each other, as well as securely fixing the device in the mounting box.
Connecting a TV outlet
To connect such an outlet, you must follow a simple algorithm:
- Prepare and install socket box. To mount built-in devices, which are the most common at present, you have to drill a hole in the wall for the box. In addition, to lay an antenna cable suitable for such an outlet, you will have to ditch the wall. These works are associated with the appearance of a large amount of dust, so they are trying to coincide with the repair in the apartment.
- Prepare the cable. To do this, it is necessary to remove the protective sheath layer approximately 3 cm from its end. Next, you need to carefully release the central conductor from the insulation at a distance of 1 cm from the edge.
- Separate the body from the front panel and support.
- Connect the center conductor to the corresponding housing terminal using a screw connection.
- Fix the cable screen with a special clamp, while ensuring their reliable electrical contact.
- Attach the board to the support and fix the entire structure in the mounting box prepared in advance.
- Install the front part of the TV socket.
- Connect the antenna wire coming from the TV to the appropriate socket outlet (TV-R-SAT)
It should be noted that there are designs of television sockets, the method of attaching the antenna wire to which may differ slightly. For example, Legrand sockets can use hinged or spring-loaded mounts. In any case, the basic principle of connection remains unchanged.
Connecting a group of television outlets
It has long been normal to have two or more TVs in one apartment, which can receive a signal from a cable television provider (TV) or from a satellite dish (SAT). In order to properly connect Legrand TV sockets, you can use the following diagram.
The connection diagram of television outlets shown in the figure is called "star connection" and has several advantages:
- Slight signal attenuation.
- Since all the wires come out of one place, it is convenient to place the input box in it.
- There is no need to use an excessive number of feed-through sockets, which has a positive effect on signal quality.
- The failure of one device does not affect the quality of the work of all the others.
In this diagram, television outlets are connected through a special device called a splitter. It is designed to split a TV or SAT signal into equal parts transmitted to separate devices without losing its quality. This is not the only type of splitter used for laying antenna cables. Another common type of these devices is TAP. Their main difference is that the splitter divides the signal into equal parts according to the number of subscribers and can be used as a signal adder. As for the TAP type splitter, it separates a certain part of the tv (SAT) signal and transmits it to the number of pins provided for by the design.
When choosing a splitter, you should pay attention to its frequency characteristics. There are two main types of these devices:
- Splitters designed for installation in digital television networks. They have operating frequencies not exceeding 1 GHz.
- Splitters for satellite dishes (SAT). And operating frequencies lie in the range up to 2.5 GHz.
Another important selection criterion for these devices is signal attenuation. If possible, you need to install a splitter that has this parameter as minimal as possible in the frequency range used.
If the signal coming from the provider or tv antenna is too weak or there are too many TVs to which it is planned to be transmitted, then you need to take care of installing an amplifier (for example, a SAT Legrand amplifier).
Another way to connect is to use a serial circuit, an indispensable element of which is a pass-through socket.
This scheme provides for a series connection of feed-through sockets, the last of which must be terminal. It should be noted that with such a connection there is some signal attenuation, so it is undesirable to use a large number of elements in it. The advantage of such a scheme can be called a significant savings in cable.
