Home audio & video: seting up cable in my house
seting up cable in my house
by owenhubbard - 7/3/09 7:06 PMHi, i am in college and am renting a house with 2 other guys. I need to know how to run coax cable to get the best sigal to 4 tvs (one with a cable box). We have one line running in, Do i need a video amp or just a 4 way spliter. last year i lived there and i ran just a split of the cable box and the signal sucked. could that be just my cable. im not sure what to do
thanks for the help
owen
Cable to TVs
by Dan Filice - 7/3/09 8:45 PM In reply to: seting up cable in my house by owenhubbardThere are many reasons that can cause a lousy cable signal. One is the quality of the splitter. Buy a high quality splitter. A good splitter will cost more than the cheap-o one found at the local store that costs only $5.99. Go to your cable company office and ask if they could sell you one of their splitters. I have cable, and for the longest time I had two HD cable boxes and 3 TVs that received only basic cable via coax. I simply took the main cable from the pole and used a splitter, and all is fine. Another possible cause of lousy signal is the quality of the coax. Use only RG6, not RG59 coax.
Here is the one I use;
by ahtoi - 7/3/09 8:45 PM In reply to: seting up cable in my house by owenhubbardRCA model DT140M 4 way bi-directional RF amplifier. I got this one from one of the Bestbuy store. One thing about cable without a box; you cannot get channels any higher than 99. So take take that into consideration. Happy viewing.
-3 loss per connectdion
by WildClay - 7/4/09 4:33 PM In reply to: seting up cable in my house by owenhubbardSince you get a -3dB loss for each connnecton on a slitter, 1>4 is -12dB loss, that would likely put any cable feed on the edge.
Two things to consider, get the best splitter you can and make sure it only has the number of tapes you need, so if you need 4 get a 4-way and also look at the frequency range on the splitter, with digital you need I think 2 or 4 GHz to be sure, same on the cable amp.
If you get a cable amp get one with variable output you can adjust, hook the cable from the wall to the amp, then the amp to the splitter and hook up of all 4 tv's and adjust it to the level of gain needed to get a good picture on all 4 sets.
Don't be cheap on the amp either, anything with RF costs to do well and will be money well spent, I have seen cheap amps and splitters cause more problems then I can count.
Add'l info on splitter
by Dan Filice - 7/4/09 6:06 PM In reply to: -3 loss per connectdion by WildClayWildClay said "make sure it only has the number of taps you need," and this is very important. If you have a 4-way splitter but only have 3 TVs, then make sure that you use a RF cap on the unused port on the splitter. Leaving an unused port on a splitter is one of the biggest reasons for lousy image quality. The signal tries to escape from the unused RF connection and lowers the quality of the remaining connected cables.
In line amplifier
by mjd420nova - 7/5/09 12:34 PM In reply to: seting up cable in my house by owenhubbardThe answer would be to install an in line amplifier ahead of any splitters. Also be sure you get one with a 30MHZ to 1500MHZ bandwidth. This will work well for any antenna signals. However, with cable companies switching all of their analog signals over to digital, you'll need a seperate converter for each set on the cable line, and an amplifier for it also, preferably one provided by the cable company to support their digital format.
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