First, get coaxial terminators and screw them onto any unused coax connector in your system, whether at the splitter itself or the wall plates. Open connectors "leak" signals and may cause signal reflections in the cables; both conditions worsen reception. Terminators cost about a buck apiece, and should be available at the big-box home centers and Radio Shack stores.
If that doesn't help, the outdoor cable should be checked for wear. Carefully examine all coax connections at the same time for corrosion or water entry. Water, corrosion or damage can cause short-circuits or breaks in the antenna circuit. Reception suffers either way. This presumes the downlead is RG-6 coaxial cable. If it's not, or any wear or corrosion is noted, replace the downlead with RG-6. If the cable needs replacing, replace the coax transformer (attached to the antenna terminals) at the same time.
While troubleshooting the downlead, connect the antenna directly to only one of the TV sets, without any splitters, amplifiers or other TVs hooked up at the same time. That way, when reception is optimized on the gratest number of channels, you'll know any future reception issue isn't being caused by the downlead, the indoor cable leading to the TV or any of the connections along the way.
You do need an amplifier to get either of the CBS stations in your TVFool list, because both are fairly weak. However, the Fox and NBC stations are very strong, ruling out an antenna-mounted pre-amplifier. The best solution is a distribution amplifier installed before the splitter; this implies that you'll need to move the splitter, either into the basement or crawl space, so that it's located near an outlet for the amplifier. The Winegard HDA-100 distribution amplifier would be a good choice for this application.
|
Less advertising throughout
