Question: CBS sketchy

[Dopeylee]

I live in Muskogee, OK. We decide to give up cable and go with an antenna and a Tivo OTA just over a year ago. Everything has been great. We get all the channels we were wanting. I have a RCA ANT751R with the Winegard LNA-200.I'm not sure the exact length, but I ran new RG-6 Quad shield cable from the antenna to a RCA DH44SP 4 way splitter. I installed terminators on all of the unused splitter terminals. From the splitter it goes to the powered part of the LNA-200. From there it goes to a two way spliter. One leg goes to my AV receiver, and the other leg goes to the Tivo. We live in a two story house. The antenna mounted about 15 feet high on the roof. I used a j pipe mount that had a dish on it when we moved in.
The only problem we are having, is channel 45 (6.1) skips and pixelates when it is windy or raining. It will generally come in fine any other time. We live in a neighborhood with trees everywhere. I bought another j pipe and was planning on moving the antenna higher up to the eave of the house. That would put it about 25-30 feet high. I found out my ladder was not tall enough to reach it and my roof is steeper than I feel comfortable with climbing. Even if I move the antenna, it won't be higher than the trees around me.
Now that all this long winded stuff is done, here is my questions. Should I try to get the antenna higher, or try a different antenna, will grounding the antenna help any with the signal, or is there some other avenue I should be exploring. TVfool.com shows all the channels we are trying to get are in their green zone. Any advise would be greatly appreciated.

TV Fool

 

[Fringe Reception]

:welcome: Dopeylee

What is the purpose of the 4-way splitter (?) since you wrote you have installed terminators on "all" of the unused ports. That splitter is dividing the strength of your received signals to one fourth on each output port, regardless if there is a terminator or TV set connected. If you used a 2-way splitter, you would effectively double your signal strengths.

How did you determine you need to use a pre-amp? If you changed the 4-way to a 2-way, perhaps you could eliminate the pre-amp. If it is necessary, the pre-amp should be located close to the antenna, before any signal splitters and those must be power-passing.

Digital TV reception is based on receiving clean data streams and moving your antenna as little as a foot or two up or down might be all it takes to stabilize the signal from channel 45. Pre-amplifiers and amplifiers add 'noise' to data streams and this noise may be confusing your tuner, or your pre-amp may be over-amplifying channel 45 and thus overloading your tuner.

In practice, clean digital data is far more important than signal strength: as an example, I receive a channel from 75 miles away, split 4-ways around my home with about 115 feet of coax (longest run) using no amplifiers.

Please advise.


Jim

 

[Dopeylee]

The splitter was originally bought so I could run a line to the living room and one to each bedroom upstairs. I bought the preamplifier because of the issue with the channel in question. I read on a forum it might help. It definitely helped with being able to receive more channels. I tried bypassing the splitter a couple of weeks ago, and it did not improve the issue. I was thinking of switching to a 2 way splitter or just coupling the line together for a straight shot to the TV,but as I said there was no improvement when I tried that.

 

[Fringe Reception]

Dopeylee,

You just explained that you bought the (4-way) splitter to share signals around your house - except in your first post you said you installed 'terminators' on some of the non-used posts. That killed your signal strength by 50 - 75+%. Then, you tried to amplify the remaining 20 - 25% of the original signal your antenna was receiving ...

HEY! we can work with you and improve your system so don't be offended ... but per my original reply to you, the rationale of the way you have installed hard parts in your system makes absolutely no sense to me. Please scroll up.

Jim

 

[Dopeylee]

Trust me, I'm not getting offended. I appreciate any help. Most of the shows my wife likes are on CBS. We TiVo most of the shows we watch. She gets very upset with the reception we are getting. I have already order a two way splitter to replace the four. We decided we only really need to go to the living room and little girl's room for now. I have just been too lazy to crawl in the attic and run the coax to the other three legs of the splitter I have. I should have the new splitter and the coax run by thus weekend.

 

[Fringe Reception]

After you replace the 4-way splitter, compare your reception and perform a 'scan for new channels' - you may capture new ones. Then, try bypassing the pre-amp (remove it from the antenna circuit) using a double-female coaxial 'bullet' and compare your reception (number of channels and their stability) and for the heck of it, rescan again. Next, raise or lower your antenna a foot or two and compare your reception. Good luck and please keep us updated.

Jim

 

[Dopeylee]

The splitter hasn't arrived yet, hopefully tomorrow. I got on the roof today. I was going to try to mount the antenna on the other j pole I bought, but the base for the one that held the satellite was too big. I will go to Lowe's tomorrow to get the rest of what I need to mount the new j pole. While I was up there though, I did try bypassing the preamp. The station got considerably worse. The show would freeze up and I would get a message about searching for signal. Once I hooked the preamp back up, I got the station back. Still having same problem, but without preamp I can't get it at all.

 

[Fringe Reception]

Okay, so far (before replacing the 4-way with a 2-way) you need the pre-amp. When you swap them, try again sans the pre-amp, then try again with the pre-amp.

If it is necessary, ideally, the pre-amp should be mounted close to the antenna, before a power-passing 2-way splitter.

Jim

 

[Dopeylee]

My little girl came home from school over the weekend, so I wasn't able to get to the splitter until today. I got the splitter changed out, and I went ahead and changed the splitter going to the stereo and tv. Picture actually seems clearer and more crisp, but it did not help any with my problem. Same as the last time. If I bypass the preamp, the picture freezes. No amp, no signal. I changed out the transformer while I was messing with everything. the old one lost the connector on one leg and the insulation split on the other leg. Don't know whether to change antenna or height of antenna next.

 

[Dopeylee]

I have the preamp mounted with the antenna. The coax goes from the antenna to the preamp (just below on the same pole) to the splitter to the amp to the second splitter to the Tivo and the stereo. Both splitters are power passing. The Tivo is connevted to the TV with an hdmi cable.

 

[ATL Royals]

It seems like you're doing everything right. Are you having the issue with both the Tivo and the TV? If Tivo seems to work fine but the TV has issues, it may be that your TV's internal tuner is the problem. Perhaps there's some noise in the signal that your tuner can't handle, or a multipath reflection. If so, there are fairly inexpensive tuners you can buy that have both HDMI and F-Type outputs (I have one from Stellar Labs for an old analog CRT TV for my home in the mountains).

If both the Tivo and the TV are having issues, the tuner won't help you, and it won't help if the problem is the Tivo but not the TV (Tivo needs to use its own tuner).