Cable TV Distribution Amplifier Recommendations.

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George7941

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Is this a good amplifier?
https://www.amazon.ca/Channel-Master-Ant...ignal+amplifier

Here is the situation. A friend of mine has very poor picture quality at one location at his house. This location is wired with about a hundred feet of RG59 cable and there is too much signal strength loss over this long run. Other TVs which are located much closer to the point of entry of the cable drop to the house have good reception.

A related question is - about 80 feet of this cable run is accessible, the remaining 20 ft is buried under drywall. Is it worth replacing the 80 feet of RG59 with RG6 cable?
 
Probably not worth replacing, it's the distance that is the problem. Be sure to only amplify the long run of cable, and not the whole system; you will overload the input sensitivity of those sets that work fine now. That some is behind drywall is not an issue; new cable can be snaked regardless.

However you comment that much is accessible raises one question in my mind ... could the length be shortened if you did a proper install (shortest distance between two points reroute) of the cable? The reason is these devices are band-aid solutions ... they never offer the same quality as simply running a proper cable of a length as short as possible, and they often bring up new issues that didn't exist before. They would be a last resort if it were my home.
 
RG59 has significant UHF attenuation compared to RG6 or 6QS. Use the old cable to pull the new through the drywall, if at all possible. If not, then replace all you can. You may still need the amp.

CM is known to make good products.
 
can you just get 100' of rg6 try it out even if it's not the same path and you will know.
e.g just set up a TV right there with 100' of coiled cable.
my suspicion is the cable is damaged somewhere rather than it just being rg59.
 
A simple line amp on the long run, assuming better wire doesn't solve it, would be less expensive with no worries of overdriving other lines/units. Ten bucks maybe.
 
Get a line amp with adjustable gain so you can deal with potential overload and remember what comes out of a line amp will never have a better signal to noise ratio than what went in.
 
How do you know you need an amplifier?

b4 this question can be answered can you give me some info?

How many tv's total?
How many splitters in the home?
Does more than one tv have poor quality?
Are the ends of he cable properly crimped with compression fittings or are they the DIY type that are not cut correctly?


Even though 59 is not the industry standard anymore it is a very capable cable. The issue with it is the cable loss, about 3.5db on the low freq. and 11db on the high. Given this cable loss i would be more concerned with the level of signal coming into the house. Here in the US we (Comcast) like seeing about a flat 15 at the ground block b4 any splits. Based on the splitter(s) used, which have a set db loss per leg, and their configuration, what signal is coming in and then the cable loss can we figure out if an amp is needed. We generally find that signal strength isnt the issue in the average home ( 4-5 tvs) but either faulty cable ends, incorrect splitter configurations, or customer added equipment that is causing the ingress of off air signal.

I guess this is a long winded effort to say make sure your actually in need of the amp as you may be creating more problems if the issue is not low signal. FWIW I am a former Tech Ops Manager at Comcast with 15+ years exp.
 
I have a TV on cable with a long run in our house. The cable box has an option for a remote sensor for the IR remote control. That remote sensor uses a standard small audio connector 1/8 male or whatever the metric equivalent is. The signal was not good enough for the cable box for the TV on the second floor that was on the end of a long run, and our house is already on a cable amplifier that is installed in the cellar near where the cable comes into the house, (the signal to the entire block I live on is low). So I made up an extension cord for the remote sensor using wire normally used to run an extension for a telephone and installed the remote sensor by the TV on the second floor, and ran the extension cord to the cable box in the cellar. The signal out from the cable box in the cellar is strong enough to make it through the long run of coax to the TV on the second floor. Also, in the cellar I put another TV on that same cable box output. The cable box in the cellar has an IR sensor that works if you use a remote in the cellar so you can watch TV in the cellar and directly control the cable box for that circuit, or you can watch TV on the second floor and use the remote IR sensor by the TV on the second floor to control the channel selection. Surprisingly I do not have to disconnect the remote IR sensor on the second floor to use the cable box IR in the cellar. I just leave the second floor remote IR sensor connected all the time. It is a little strange to be controlling the cable box that is in the cellar from a remote cable box IR sensor on the second floor, and I am pretty sure that whoever thought up the remote IR sensor for the cable box did not intend for someone to run the cable box with a 100 foot extension cord on the remote sensor, but it works fine.
 
Last edited:
7 tv's in the house.

I have a cheap Radio Shack signal strength meter and it reads 0 db on the cable entering the house. The incoming cable feeds a 3-way splitter, with one -3db and two -7 db outputs. The -3 db output feeds an amplifier with 4 outputs and my meter reads 2 db (the max it can read) at the outputs. The circuit under discussion is fed from one of the -7 db outputs of the splitter. The cable company was called in about fifteen years ago because of poor quality reception and they installed the amplifier and the splitter, with the splitter before the amplifier.

The meter shows -10 db strength at the end of the 100 ft run. I hooked up the other end of the cable to one of the outputs of the existing amplifier for testing purposes and the meter showed 0 db instead of - 10 db as signal strength. This indicates that the cable is not cut.

The 2 db led on the meter is green, the 0 db led is amber (indicating just adequate) and the -2 db, -4, -6 and -10 db's are all red.

From all the advice received so far, I am going to replace as much of the RG59 with RG6 and then consider my options.

Most of the existing F connectors are the crimp on type. I have compression connectors made by Greenlee and will be using them.

Only this one TV has poor reception.
 
Spec here is 0db at the minimum at the TV with poor picture quality beginning at -5db. Based on your finding we have 0db at the beginning of the run and then dropping another 7db due to splitter loss as we go into the 100 RG59. Starting a 100' RG59 run with a -7 is insane. Even with the better line loss capabilities of RG6 your still well below that -5 threshold that we use here in the states. My opinion is to call the cable company and have them replace the drop from the pole to the house. You should have a strong positive signal going into the home and even more. I wouldst be surprised if the drop is watered out after so many years. While this issue may only be seen in this one TV i'm almost certain there are issues with the others and he has just learned to live with them.

Good luck though and please let us know how things turn out.
 
George7941, find out if your cable boxes have the remote IR sensor option. If they do put the cable box near where the cable comes it the house where the signal is strong, and run an extension for the remote IR sensor to the TV on the end of the long run. With the cable box near where the cable comes into the house it should have a good signal, and the output of the cable box should be strong enough to make it through the cable to the TV.
 
Originally Posted By: George7941
Is this a good amplifier? ....


It doesn't specify a noise figure, so I would say there is no way to know, but, only 250 ma is not a lot of standing current for an rf amplifier, so I would be dubious about it.

I would replace the cable first. Use the old cable to carefully pull the new.
 
Originally Posted By: ROLEXrifleman
Spec here is 0db at the minimum at the TV with poor picture quality beginning at -5db.


You mean 0 dBm? 0 dB doesn't tell you much without a point of reference.
 
From one of our old installer manuals


dBmV = decible millivolt = an exponentially-weighted measure of the signal's power.
 
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