Distributing DTV throughout home (long) - Page 2

Piggie · 06-14-2009, 05:43 PM

Welcome to the forum searay268,

To solve your problem I need more information, and though I have a few hints from reading your trials.

The very first thing I need to see is your TVFool plot.
Go to TV Fool put in your address then look at the top of the page for the bold print and copy and past that link here.

Also be sure to estimate the height of your antenna.

With that I can get a good idea of your signal levels at your antenna.

Once I know know the signal levels at your antenna, then I judging the requirements for feeding the TV's in your house will be (to me I guess) simple math.

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I also need to know.

In the wiring closet is the splitter one big 8 way splitter?

How many TVs are you actually feeding?

Are there any other spliters in the system?

How long is the cable from the wiring closet to the TVs?

That should give me enough information to tell you what to do or buy.

searay268 · 06-15-2009, 04:50 AM

Piggie, here's the TV Fool link: TV Fool

I originally had two four way powered splitters that got zapped a few years ago. Since I was only using four of the branches at the time, I have a simple four way splitter feeding the four televisions that we use.

I did forget to mention a splitter which I am basically using as a combiner. My satellite box is feeding into an RF modulator which runs into the wiring closet. This feed is ran into one side of the combiner and the antenna feed goes into the other. I take the line out of the combiner and it is what goes into the old amplifier I have which then goes to the 4 way splitter. All of my tests I have conducted have been without this combiner, just straight out of the antenna feed or with the old amplifier plugged directly into the feed because I wanted to remove as many variables as possible to figure out where things were breaking down.

Each television run from the wiring closet is different. I'm guessing here but I'd say they are runs of 20, 25 and 35 feet. The other run goes to the far end of the room above the garage and that may be close to 50 feet by the time you take into account going from the basement to the second floor and then to the back of the room.

I was also trying to figure out the gain for the antenna I have. Apparently Radio Shack has quit selling my antenna since I could not find it on their site, but I believe it's a VU-190XR (based on googling all over the net) but I could not find the technical specs for it and I don't have the paperwork for it.

Thanks

searay268 · 06-16-2009, 07:52 AM

Once I found out I could hook up the Channel Master 7777 to my antenna, I went ahead and ordered one. I'll let you know how it goes.

Again, thanks for all the input.

CptlA · 06-16-2009, 10:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by searay268

Once I found out I could hook up the Channel Master 7777 to my antenna, I went ahead and ordered one. I'll let you know how it goes.

Again, thanks for all the input.

Good luck, my dad bought the CM 7777 for a short run of coax (50' which was distrubuted to 4 other HD TVs in his house, and it worked out great for him. He also went to RG-6 in the process so I don't know which helped him out more, but what I do know is that those 2 changes worked for him.

YMMV.