TheApprentice

Don_M

The answer is, as always, "it depends."

If you have a good-sized outdoor antenna and the transmitters of all TV stations you want to receive are 10 miles away or so, chances are fair to good that no amp is needed at all.

If the stations are roughly 15-30 miles distant, a distribution amplifier inserted just before the splitter could be warranted.

Beyond about 30 miles in most cases, you'll want an antenna-mounted pre-amplifier to counteract signal loss in the cable between the antenna and splitter. Pre-amplifiers have two components: The amplifier up at the antenna, and a power injector, mounted just before the splitter, which sends DC power up the coaxial downlead even as signals travel in the other direction.

Bear in mind these distances are very general benchmarks for good signal environments -- those without ridges, mountains, heavy forests or big buildings in the way.

Avoid those barrel-shaped inline amps that boost signals "downstream" of the splitter. They're typically so noisy that most actually hurt DTV reception instead of helping it.

Piggie

If you go to this web site and put in your address, and the height of your antenna, then there will be a strange plot. No worries you can copy the bold link at the top of the results page and post it here.

Then we can figure out exactly if you need an amp, which type and where to place it.

An amp can do everything from add new channels to all TVs, to make TV's loose channels, so without the above information from TVFool, like Don said he is only guessing.

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