Coaxial Installations & Relocations

Where coaxial cabling still matters

Coax has not gone away. Free-to-air television, satellite feeds, HFC NBN services, shared MATV and SMATV systems in apartment buildings and some legacy security and video distribution all still run over coaxial cabling. It remains the simplest way to distribute a broadcast signal to multiple rooms without any active equipment at the far end.

Most work we do falls into three groups: adding a new outlet where the furniture layout has changed, relocating an existing outlet during a renovation or TV-wall build, and repairing runs that have degraded and are producing pixelation, dropouts or a lost signal entirely.

Signal levels, splitters and why the picture breaks up

Every splitter divides the available signal, and every metre of cable loses a little more. Feed four outlets from a single antenna through cheap splitters and long runs, and the outlet at the end of the chain can drop below the level a tuner needs — which shows up as pixelation, sound dropouts or channels disappearing in poor weather.

The fix is not always an amplifier. Too much amplification overloads the tuner and looks identical to too little. We measure the signal at the outlet, then correct the actual cause: a failed splitter, a corroded connector, water in an external joint, degraded cable, or an amplifier set incorrectly.

• Pixelation on some channels but not others — usually a level or interference issue
• All outlets poor — likely the antenna, lead-in or head-end equipment
• One outlet poor — that run, its connector or its splitter leg
• Worse in wind or rain — often a loose mount or moisture in a joint

Renovations, TV walls and HFC NBN outlets

TV walls and mounted screens look best when the coax, power and data all terminate neatly behind the screen. Doing that during a renovation, before the wall is sheeted, is straightforward. Retrofitting into a finished wall is still very achievable in cavity construction and we route cabling to keep everything concealed.

For HFC NBN premises, the coax outlet feeding the modem is customer-side cabling and can be relocated or replaced by a registered cabler. As with any NBN work, equipment owned by NBN Co or your carrier is outside what we are authorised to alter, and we will tell you if that applies to your job.