I need to pull some coax through my house; I'd like to add a cable drop in the living room for my cable modem and wireless router, also cable drops in the bedroom so we can watch TV upstairs. I thought that what I wanted was "RG-6 quad shield" but after a quick web search I see that Belden 7916 (quad shield) is actually swept to only 3 GHz while the Belden 1694A is swept to 4.5 GHz but is only dual shield. I ASSume that I want to pull the best product available for less loss and future uses that I don't even anticipate yet, but the question is, what is the "best?" Good places to buy? Best crimp tools and connectors? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Belden coax will empty your wallet rather quickly.
When I worked at the cable company we used Times Fiber Communications (Amphenol) coax specd. to 1GHz. While I've been out of the cable biz for a while, I don't believe any systems are running over 1GHz and I don't expect they ever will due to the change to digital transmissions which are much more tolerant of signal loss.
Your local cable company will in all probability sell you a spool of their coax (1000'), connectors and splitters at a reasonable price if you ask, this is pretty common for home builders who prewire houses. Since the cable companies are required to keep signal leakage from their cable system within FCC limits, they have an interest in providing those pre-wiring houses with quality components.
1000' of coax may sound like a lot, but since you should home run everything from a central point where you locate the splitter or splitters, that length will get used up pretty rapidly. Never use more or larger splitters than necessary since every split results in increased signal loss (3.5db per split). Always orient the splitters properly as well (in port to cable system) since the loss between two of the output ports if you connect the splitter incorrectly is 2x the loss you get the proper way.
If you have a cable modem, always connect it with a 2 way splitter at the start of your splitters and feed your other splitters from the other port. Downstream signals are strong enough to handle a number of splits, but upstream signals are a bit weaker so you don't want excessive losses there.
Crimpers depend on the connector type you get. The compression type connectors seem to be the most popular these days (were just coming to market when I left CATV). I've seen crimpers for the compression connectors at Lowe's so you should be able to get suitable ones there or probably Depot as well.
I haven't looked at the current tiny dish digital stuff closely, but I suspect it may be using an even lower intermediate frequency band. Even if it isn't, the coax just has higher losses at the upper frequencies, which for the digital signals is less critical than it was for the old analog signals.
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