Hi, My beef with cable co. is their signal strength is always way higher than it needs to be. That said most common problem with signal quality inside house is either poor cable or poor connections. As an example, attaching male or female connector at the end of cable seems simple enough but depending on how it is done, it can make a huge difference. My back is in RF telecomm/Digital data network. Also ham since 1960.
my cable is good, it's brand new quad shield that I put the ends on myself. so are all my jumper cables (easier than going to the store.) the piece I replaced was the last of the old cable co. stuff in the house, and that was part of the problem. Even free stuff is more expensive overall than using the parts/tools that I already have in my basement :) (time is money, you know.)
nate
You get what you pay for. Outside-feed room drops are not only ugly, but leave the cable exposed to weather and insect/animal damage. That cable they use is often nothing to write home about, either- While RG6 quad-shield, it is no-name cheap stuff for most installers. But that is the cheap way, so that is how they do it. I'd rather do it correctly myself, or even pay somebody to do it correctly. Feed through attic or basement, use quality parts, and never have to mess with it again.
Did you use quality connectors such as snap seals and not those crappy twist on connectors? Cable companies aren't know for spending money but there is good reason why every coax connection they make will be with a snap seal.
Yes. Cox has been here a few times. They removed and replaced several connectors inside and outside, changed a do-ma-jigger (filter) at the street tap, placed the filter on another port and pulled new wires to the house.
A new splitter ( preferred by the company) was installed once. The cable from the street tap to the house was corroded from lawn sprinklers getting the main street box wet.
When I had cable tv I wasn't paying too much attention, but one thing I noticed was: They left spare cable at their box on the wall of my house -- that's good -- but they scrunched it up to stick it in the little box, and I thought that would lower my signal strength. It worked so I never complained about it. (Even then I used the VCR box outside my house as a channel selector, so I think the cable signal strength no longer matters once it's processed by the VCR??)
If the OP does use a signal amp, I have used Gemini brand, which I think are cheap ones, and they've been running continuously for 26 and
24 years. They've never given me any trouble. Last year one of my many self-attached F-connectors caused trouble for a while, but I actually never figured out which one it was. I just lifted up my pile of wires in the closet, and fluffed it out, and whatever connection was bad got good again.AIUI, a 4-way amp is just an amp with a four way splitter in the same container. It's neater obviously, and fewer opportunities to make a bad short co-ax wire, You would need 3 if you used three external
2-way splitters. But I followed the instructions and got some cheap cable crimpers, and when the ones i made actually stuck together, they all worked well.
Nate,
There are incredibly varying qualities in splitters. Look for one that's all metal, soldered around the edges and is made by a reputable outfit. I like gold plated connectors but nickel ones work just as well, although they film over in humid areas. Splitters are often rated for certain frequencies only. If I were powering four devices, I'd definitely put a signal amp in. Also, on a four way, one connector will be marked IN with the other three marked OUT, although you can use it in reverse as a signal combiner, but few people need that. Make sure you've got that right - all four connectors are not created equally.
I'd split the cable coming in with a dual, one leg going to the cable modem and then take the other leg and run it into a signal amp and to the TVs. Why? Because when the cable modem F's up, it's easy to remove all the TV's and signal amps from the equation by removing the splitter and using a barrel to replace it. That way only the cable modem is connected to the incoming wire, and Comcast can't BS me about "you may have 'customer installed equipment' (they say those words as if they were bitter poison) that is interfering with your cable signal."
Also, if your terminations is bad, or you're using the wrong sort of cable you can seriously screw up reception. A cable guy once told me he was astounded by the RF leakage he finds in houses where the owners have done their own wiring. I believe him.
For years I thought screw-on coax connectors were just as good as crimped/compressed until fellow newsgroupers beat some sense into me and I got a Snap'n'seal compression tool and a box of gold-plated compression fittings. The foot massager that had always put noise on the bedroom TV no longer did so when I redid all the fittings from screw and crimp to compression. The difference on TV's at the ends of long cable runs was incredibly noticeable. Cabling is like plumbing, to be good, it has to be tight without leaks. The problem is that it's much hard to find cable leaks. No puddles!
-- Bobby G.
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