Home base TV Antenna

philh wrote:
Thank your for all the responses.

Broadcast stations are a mix of UHV and VHF, furthest stations I'm trying to receive is about 50 miles. Not that far for the monster antenna. Also had an omni directional uhf antenna that didn't pick up much of anything

Below is the sequence from antenna to living room TV. It was interesting that removing the splitter had zero impact on signal, which shocked me.

Channel Master advantage 100 antenna
75 ohm adapter (changed out once)
short cable (18"?)
preamp (originally channel master switched out for cheap RCA, which actually improved the signal)
100' higher quality RG6 (replaced 100' channel master cable)run in crawl space
amp power supply
Short cable to 3 way splitter (splitter replaced twice, newest one is channel master passive which will pass through preamp power, also had a powered splitter, but it didn't seem to work at all)
12' cable connected to wall outlet
3' cable from wall outlet to TIVO

Kitchen TV, also 12 ft cable from splitter

Bedroom TV 50' cable from splitter to park model drop to wall outlet
3' lead to TV

All TV's react the same way, i.e. They all suffer the same amount of pixelation. I'd love to say the bedroom drop had an issue, especially since my movement in the bedroom affects ALL TV's, but I bypassed the splitter and it didn't improve the signal.

I could connect the bedroom TV to the antenna, bypassing the splitter and the rest of the cables.


One other issue, that I believe is another symptom, in hot sun, signal reception is worse.

Way to long of runs, way too much coax, way too many connections and I suspect you have the 3 way splitter in between the preamp power injector which is the wrong place for the power injector.

The TV tuners may not "like" having 12V-15V DC present on the tuner inputs either..

Even though a splitter may "pass" DC voltage, it does so at a loss of voltage.. Passive splitters are nothing more than 75 Ohm resistors inside and the power injector only inserts 12-15V DC onto the line. Some preamps give the option of adjusting the gain of the preamp at the power injector.. They simply reduce the voltage going to the preamp which lowers the gain.

I recommend you sort of start from scratch.

Remove all of the extra cables, connections and splitter out of the setup.

Run the shortest cable you have directly from the antenna to the power injector and then to ONE TV and see if things are working.

Your power injector MUST be installed before any splitters!

Here is snip of the RCA manual for their preamps..



Of course, you will still need the 75 ohm to 300 ohm balum plus the short jumper from the balum to the mast mounted preamp.

This may mean for a temporary test taking a small TV outside and connecting it up.

You have to reduce the squirrels nest of wires and connections by process of elimination.

Once you are satisfied the test setup works then add in your 100ft cable from antenna and install power inserter there with ONE TV and see if you get the same results as the outdoor short cable test.

If satisfied with indoor test, proceed to add in the 3 way splitter AFTER the power injector (antenna lead goes to the power injector marked antenna, output lead (marked to TV) of injector goes to input of the splitter and output of splitter ports goes to TVs).

Then report back your results..

I do think you have way too much cable which is not helping things either but you need to start troubleshooting without all of the other unknowns.