Resolved TVs

[AbdRahim]

Anyone have any experience with a cable tv signal booster or amplifier?

I wonder if this would work;
Amazon.com

 

[Old-RV'er]

For satellite and cable to work correctly, the OTA amplifier built in needs to be off. I have OTA at home, and it has a booster, but it does not work all that well. Clear skies and digitizes really bad. Rainey and they all seem to work well. We are about 90 miles from ATL. I have another antenna, which I am going to test higher up in elevation to see if this improves, but WX for next week is marginal, aint going to freeze to death for TV. I do not get great OTA TV in our coach. Yes, I could go through and find and change all the splitters to high quality ones, or even straight line the connection, but not that important to me.

 

[AbdRahim]

For satellite and cable to work correctly, the OTA amplifier built in needs to be off. I have OTA at home, and it has a booster, but it does not work all that well. Clear skies and digitizes really bad. Rainey and they all seem to work well. We are about 90 miles from ATL. I have another antenna, which I am going to test higher up in elevation to see if this improves, but WX for next week is marginal, aint going to freeze to death for TV. I do not get great OTA TV in our coach. Yes, I could go through and find and change all the splitters to high quality ones, or even straight line the connection, but not that important to me.

Yes the OTA is off. But one bar out of ten works much of the time on cable, but recently lost signal altogether. So, I need to boost the cable signal, inside the coach.

I tried one of the GE ones recommended by Neal. It does not seem to be compatible with the old one in the BayStar. I will order another and try the two, in order to see if I can reduce signal degradation. An effective booster seems to e the best solution, if it would work.

 

[Just George]

@AbdRahim If you have 7 bars on the cable going into the splitter and one bar if the splitter is in the line then it seems the loss can only be one of 2 things. A) the splitter, or B) the cable between the splitter and the TV. I'm not sure what upper frequency the cable signal may be but if you are using a splitter with a upper freq rating of 2300 - 2500 Mhz then I would think that would not be the issue since the upper end of TV broadcast is ~1000 Mhz. You also mention you tried a number of different splitters with no luck. Given your test results I would say the cable between the splitter and the TV is the primary suspect.

 

[AbdRahim]

@AbdRahim If you have 7 bars on the cable going into the splitter and one bar if the splitter is in the line then it seems the loss can only be one of 2 things. A) the splitter, or B) the cable between the splitter and the TV. I'm not sure what upper frequency the cable signal may be but if you are using a splitter with a upper freq rating of 2300 - 2500 Mhz then I would think that would not be the issue since the upper end of TV broadcast is ~1000 Mhz. You also mention you tried a number of different splitters with no luck. Given your test results I would say the cable between the splitter and the TV is the primary suspect.

Thanks. 1-3 bars on 2 differentTV’s on so different wires. ill see what happens with the 2 matching new splitters. I did not order the amp, but Iam tempted.

 

[Neal]

Any pics of your splitters?

 

[AbdRahim]

Any pics of your splitters?

I assume these are Newmar standard issue. I have a second GE one on order, now that I removed the couch to get to the second one.

 

[Neal]

I can't read the frequency spectrum on it but I changed them out per my article to the ones compatible with digital coax which is what some campgrounds use. You also should put terminators on the unused ports.

 

[AbdRahim]

Terminators killed the signal altogether. I order the ones you suggested.

 

[Just George]

Looks like the Newmar std 4 way splitter upper freq = 1000 Mhz. It will help if you go to a 2 way splitter assuming that is all you are using. A good 2 way will have about 1/2 the loss of a 4 way. Also I think it's been covered but putting terminators on any unused ports can also help.

 

[Neal]

I don't think that's possible, technically. Did you try the newer splitter with the wider frequency range? After all that's done rescan for channels.

 

[Neal]

Looks like the Newmar std 4 way splitter upper freq = 1000 Mhz. It will help if you go to a 2 way splitter assuming that is all you are using. A good 2 way will have about 1/2 the loss of a 4 way. Also I think it's been covered but putting terminators on any unused ports can also help.

Agree, a splitter with only the needed connections is ideal and then no terminators are needed either.

 

[Just George]

If a terminator happened to be shorted it could kill the signal, but otherwise would not expect loss of signal due to terminators. Best I can offer re splitter is go to a 2 way splitter with upper freq in the 2300-2500Mhz range. A good 2 way will have a output loss of ~ 3.5db I would guess the 4 way loss is double that.

 

[AbdRahim]

I think they used that one because all the wires are on the same side. I did order bothe the 4 and 2 to try behind the couch.

 

[Neal]

Best you can do is quality splitters and terminators. Outside of that I expect crappy signal from campgrounds running coax probably split more than it should be, not amplified, and coax connectors weathered and corroded. It is odd to not get the same channels across all TV's, I still have the same problem at times. It's just not a good setup no matter what you do.