When they built our house, I had them run RG6 to every room in the house. I have an outside Terk antenna (piece of crap) that I plan to replace soon with a DIY antenna I built. The question I have is can I use a 4-6way splitter to route the signals to all the rooms, or do I need some type of amplifier to strengthen the signal for some of the longer distances?

All the RG6 is run to a central location in my basement, and since we are 26+ miles form the towers, inside antennas don't cut it to receive all the HD channels.

I noticed Home Depot and Menards have splitters with one input and 4-6 outputs, just wondering if it would be that easy?

I would run an amplifier on the signal first then to the splitter, this way you should be guaranteed to have good signals to all TV's.

Jay, don't they sell splitters with a built-in amplifier? Either way, an amplifier is the way to go.

Is there any way that an amplifier could send too high of a signal to say a satellite box with detrimental effects?

its my understanding that too strong of a ATSC signal can overload the input on the tuner which causes problems similar to weak signals

Yep, they do sell Splitters with built in amplifiers, I was thinking more along the lines of a single powered amplifier then to a non powered/no gain splitter since he is looking for a rather large number of line outs, this would be a cheaper solution.

Sirquack,

Make sure the splitter will pass the full HD video bandwidth without degradation. It should have a range of 5 Megahertz to 1.5 Gigahertz in order to avoid any HD signal degradation.

Regards,

Alan

Thanks everyone...

Alan, on the gold splitter I purchased it says 5-2300mhz, so I would guess I'm covered?

I'll try hooking it up and see how it works before I worry about an amplifier. My Terk antenna had an amplifier, but I received better performance with it not hooked up.

Thanks, Randy

Randy, if you're not happy with the splitter you purchased, or it's not what Alan was suggesting, I found this site that sells Ultralink splitters that have a 5 MHz to 2 GHz bandwidth. They are the three at the bottom of the page.

I think I have a low grade splitter, and I just might pick one of these up myself.

Those look similar to the one I got, except mine is a 4-way.. If this dang rain ever stops I plan to get it all hooked up.

I'd be curious about the DIY antenna you built. Ours has to be 20 yrs old.

20's a good age. The 20-year-old at work said hi to me today.

Randy linked to it a while ago. I believe this one is it.

That's the one I made. I gained a few, lost a few, and in general it was a worse performer than the huge UHF/VHF antenna in the attic that's pointing the wrong direction and I can't change that. The deal is that the DIY linked from Peter above is tuned for UHF frequencies. Here in the New Orleans area we have two stations that broadcast their HD signal over VHF, hence the two that I lost. There is another DIY version that is supposed to cover all the bases, but I haven't built it yet... stay tuned!

Scott

Hi Randy,

Yes, without getting out my calculator or having another cup of coffee, I think 2300 MHz is 2.3 GHz, so you should be fine.

And yes, the Terk stuff is lousy.

Cheers,
Alan

I always thought that a coffee mug with a built in calculator would be a good invention. Of course, that's old school now. It would have to have a bluetooth media player with an OLED touch interface. The small print on the packaging would say "Coffee ICup Player should not be used with hot beverages as it may damage the electronics."

Duckman, as Peter mentioned I used that link as well as this one, mine is more like the youtube one, classic Styx song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0m6AfR-9As&feature=related

Ha, ha! Excellent.

Alan