In the very near future (some time this summer) I intend to “cut the cable” which, in our case, is Uverse. Right now the gateway is in our basement and is connected to three cable boxes around the house. I have several questions: can I use any of this existing wiring to connect the gateway (router) to Tablo via ethernet? (Thereby locating the Tablo on the first floor positioned close to the antenna.) A second question would be, could I use any of this wiring to connect an antenna to the Tablo if I chose to set the Tablo in the basement next to the router? Finally, has anyone done this after having had Uverse?
A lot of “it depends” to your questions…
Describe in reasonable detail what your in-house wiring consists of.
Is the cabling coax or ethernet (Cat5 / Cat6)?
Are the runs “home runs” or are they daisy-chained?
If you are quitting U-Verse, I’d assume you wont be using their gateway any longer - unless you’re keeping it just for Internet?
If you’re keeping their gateway, which one is it?
etc…
Thanks for the response. The gateway is a Pace ATT ADSL Modem (4111n). Cabling is ethernet but I don’t know the difference between Cat5 / Cat6 just by looking at it. I don’t believe they are daisy chained. If/when I quit Uverse TV, I am continuing with the Internet, but am unsure if they will give me a different modem. Beside, I still have VOIP from them.
Yes you can. I did the exact same thing you’re doing. u-verse installs Cat5 if there is no existing coax to use. When you cancel TV, but keep internet, you keep the modem (RG) that you have. They just deactivate the TV portion and have you return the STB. Sounds like you’re already wired and good to go.
They may well just keep you with the same gateway and turn off your TV services.
If it is ethernet, it will not be daisy-chained.
So to try and answer your question, if you keep the same gateway, the “yellow” ports are just an ethernet switch, and if those are what you have running to your Tablo, you should be fine with with connecting that to the Tablo for its network connection.
Edit:
See what @tacopeland posted while I was typing…
The gateway is basically just a DSL Router, and the ethernet (which U-Verse uses for IPTV) will work fine with Tablo.
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Thank you both for your replies. Please excuse me for being a little dense, but I’d like to have my “ducks in order” before cutting off the TV service. Therefore, if I understand this properly, I can unplug the ethernet from the STB to our main TV, plug that into the Tablo, connect an antenna and hard drive. The gateway will still be in the basement and this configuration will be on the first floor.
Yup, assuming you maintain Internet services with U-Verse, that should work exactly as you describe.