Foxtel Wall Plate

[Jason76]

I have just moved into a house, no antenna socket, just a foxtel wall plate on both.

1st one has 3 screw plugs and works fine with a standard antenna fitted with a $2 connector from Jaycar.

2nd one is more tricky, it has 3 plugs but the 3rd is a earth wire. I have tried both the foxtel connectors , with no luck. 

My question is, what do I need to do, get a antenna guy to install another wall plate with a antenna socket? Or is there another device I could use? i tried a power amplifier with no luck.

Im pretty sure neither plug is antenna for FTA TV. thanks.

Jason 

[I am not a duck]

Your image shows a standard Foxtel plate with an earthing post. This is used to earth the coaxial cable on the satellite side of things.

Both those points will more than likely be connected to either a multiswitch in your roof space, or a multi connector LNB on the satellite dish. Looking at the satellite dish will  most likely tell you what method is used: If there are 4 connectors on the LNB at the end of the arm on the dish, with 4 cables coming from this, your 2 Foxtel wallplates (if you only have 2 of these) go directly to this. If there are only 2 connectors with cables, then most likely there is a multiswitch inside the roof void space. This may be visible by looking through the manhole cover into the roof void space, or it may be necessary to enter this space to find it. The multiswitch can sometimes be found in a cabinet elsewhere if you have a smart wired house.

If your existing free to air antenna has sufficient signal, it is relatively easy to connect this to one of the 2 Foxtel points on the plate you show by using a splitter. Depending on your skill set, this is something you may be able to do yourself.

Alternatively, if you wish to keep your Foxtel access, another cable run to that particular plate, which is then connected to your FTA antenna, will be required.

 

[Jason76]

It looks like I have the 4 cables from the dish. What exactly do I do with the cables, Im more than happy to learn and give it a go, might save calling out a tech. Appreciate all your help. 

[I am not a duck]

Simply put, it will be necessary to identify which cables go to the wallplate without FTA. If you are not going to use Foxtel now or in the future, then one of these cables can be cut & your existing FTA can be fed down it by splitting the FTA signal where it comes from the antenna & connecting it to this cable.

If you wish to keep Foxtel, it's a little more complex, either a new cable would need to be run to that wallplate & connected to the FTA antenna, or a diplexer setup to carry both signals on the one cable.

Matchmaster have some instructional videos about splitters & things, also youtube has a lot of stuff about splitters & terminating coaxial cables.

 

[Z2TT]

You have two options here to get TV Antenna reception to that Foxtel point.
 

You could install a Diplexer in the roof and connect the digital TV aerial to that Diplexer so it can feed both Foxtel and TV signal there.

Alternatively (not in your case), if you ever see the need not to use Foxtel, you could cut one of the coax cables from the Foxtel and connect it to your TV Antenna.