TV coax splitter/amplifier recommended brands?

[<aemeijers]

(Okay, I know this isn&#39;t the right group, but the sat tv groups my ISP carries are almost abandoned.)

Situation- I have a dual-head dishnet receiver, plus a half-ass OTA antenna. The receiver is one of those dual receivers where you can run a feed line to the rest of the house, and watch or record a different program. The magic connector boxes on the outside of the house intermix all 3 coax lines from the roof, with 5 or 6 lines going through the wall (hard to tell in that mudded rats nest, and the data plates are all painted over), and 3 lines (lnb1,lnb2, and antenna) going in to the back of the receiver. (Not sure what the installer left in the crawlspace between the outside hole, and the floor holes in living room.) There is a single line coming out of the receiver, running to the legacy house wiring. At the back of the dishnet receiver, the downstream feed is clear and strong, on the OTA channels, and the &#39;channel 60&#39; faux channel put out by the receiver. Downstream, it passes through multiple runs of coax, some unlabeled, some rg-6. First it runs to a ground block, then to a 3-way splitter, then to the individual drops. Disconnecting from the ground block (which is supposed to be on outside of house, I know), and a plugging a TV in there, the OTA and channel 60 signals are still strong, but a tad noisy. However, once past the splitter, even though the OTA signals are strong, the channel 60 signal drops off to borderline usable, and is quite snowy. I tried a Rat Shack 10 db inline amp both upstream and downstream of the splitter, and it made things worse. My conclusion is that my splitter is junk. However, looking in the various cable TV aisles around town, they all look like junk, and all show 4-8 db attenuation on the output sides.

I&#39;m sure I&#39;m not the first one faced with this situation. Short of paying someone to replace all the house wiring with nice fresh stuff, to a central distribution panel on the wall in the living room behind the TV, is there a painless and cheap solution? Does anyone make a quality (and hopefully amplifed) splitter that would work 25 feet or so from the receiver? Is there something obvious I am missing? Any suggestions or ideas greatly appreciated. (I&#39;d love to be able to fall asleep to the dish channels without squinting through the static.)

aem sends....

[Todd H.]

Which, by definition, a passive splitter has to have, otherwise laws of physics would be violated. :-)

The amplifiers I have in my house installed by the cable company are PCT brand, model PCT-MA2-M. You&#39;ll need access to a 2 prong electrical outlet to plug in its requisite wall wart power supply that pushes dc power over standard RG6 to the amplifier.

60 being a higher channel, it generally will exhibit more loss than you see on lower channels. The best location for the amplifier is nearest your feed point, after which passive splitters can be used. The further downstream you add the splitter, the more noise you&#39;re amplifying.

It also helps somewhat if you terminate any unused co-ax jacks with

75ohm terminator plugs, or eliminate unneeded splitters.

Disconnect and reconnect all splitter connections to knock off any potential oxidation that may be contributing to signal loss. Also consider that poorly installed connectors are a very common cause problems too.

Good luck!

Best Regards,

-- Todd H.

[<aemeijers]

(snip)

Hey, thanks- I&#39;ll look online for one of those. Maybe I&#39;ll also try readdressing the faux channel to a lower channel, and see if that helps. They just set it to 60 as the default, since few areas have real OTA stations that high up. I think the upper 20s are vacant within 75 miles or so of here. I already did the connection thing, and all cables are either factory made, or cable co. swage-style fittings. I&#39;m just not sure if all the runs are rg6. (Wish I could get a reel of the cable and the connector kit we use at work for the portable 2-way sat dishes- those cables look nice.)

Yeah, I know I need a distribution panel and home runs in the crawlspace five feet from the receiver. But that crawlspace is a PITA to get into. I wish the previous owner had put the sat drop in the front living room- that would have made a great dedicated media room- I don&#39;t need perfection back here in the back living room I use as an office, and the front living room is over the basement.

aem sends....

aem sends...

aem sends...

[hallerb]

more than you ever want to know about satellite tv, i am a regular poster there and used to be a dish dealer.

if your setup has RG59 and old splitters thats probably the cause. the dish boxes put out a pretty robust signal over coax.

coax connectors can get noisey, have someone watch tv then touch and tighten and loosen each connection to find the offender. taking off and putting back often fixes it.

[Steven Stone]

RG 6 is a better choice today than RG 59.

Channel Master makes pre amps with respectable signal to noise ratios. Make sure any unused ports on splitters are properly terminated.

I have a mast mount Channel Master 7777 preamp on my OTA antenna. I also use an old Channel Master MATV 7330B amp to boost the channel 3 signal from a DirecTV box for use at 3 other TV&#39;s thru a significant amount of old RG 59 coax.

The key is good connections, coax in good shape, preamps with decent signal to noise ratios, the least amount of splitters possible to get the job done, preamps put in the right place in the circuit, preamps adjust to provide the needed signal strength, not too much, not too little.