Quote:
Originally Posted by slowhike
I thank you for taking the time to give excellent information. I'll be re-reading this & putting it to good use.
Thanks. ...Tim
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Tim,
If you want to use a splitter, I think GroundUrMast has given you some excellent tips. As for myself, I am not a big fan of splitters. It's like the analogy of flowing water through a faucet.... and now you've split that water flow into two paths in different directions. It's a given that there's going to be signal loss before the coax ever hits any of your TVs when you have splitters involved. Now, would it be enough loss to cause you to lose stations? That is debatable.
But if you are going to purchase a splitter, a 3 way splitter (based on your requirements) sounds like the best plan. I would deffinitely think about getting a preamp to boost your signal if you plan on splitting the the signal 3 ways. Even without splitters, preamps are not bad to have in the mix if you have such things as long coax cable runs between the antenna and the television. I've got a Winegard HDP 269 hooked up to my outdoor Winegard 9095P. This preamp and downlead cable only service one TV, but it's working well for me.
In my particular case, I never gave much serious consideration to getting the signal split off my main downstairs living room TV. I've got a load baring wall between the Living Room and the bedroom upstairs where I've got the other TV. There was going to be no easy way to have a splitter and tie these two TVs together. Well, that is, unless I wanted to punch another hole in the outside of my house and feed more coax back inside (this time into the upper level of the house versus the pilot hole that was drilled to get the coax from outside to my downstairs living room on the lower level.
I found it MUCH easier to dedicate a second dedicated antenna just for my bedroom TV. I've got it ran behind the wall (upstairs) that feeds directly into attic space. I bought a Clearstream 4 from AntennasDirect (mast not included) and installed this in the attic space just above my upstairs bedroom. The antenna is actually in the sweet spot (on the south side of the house) where it can get at the signals from the SW (Charlotte) and SW (the Triad stations. Because this antenna is installed in the sweet spot of my attic, it is able to get signals almost as well as my outdoor Winegard 9095P! And who would have ever thought that?
The result? I never had to worry about signal loss with a splitter as each TV has its own dedicated antenna. And to my amazement, my Clearstream 4 is working almost as well as my outdoor Winegard 9095P with a HDP269 preamp as I was saying before. So this is just something for you to ponder as far as getting separate antennas for the other TVs and putting them inside the attic. Of course, it's really ideal if you can find the sweet spot in your attic for placement and run as much coax as needed to get to any attic antenna installs.
Aside from splitters, and aside from running your own separate dedicated antennas for additional TVs, I believe there is an electronic device that will actually allow you to get the OTA signal from the main TV (that is hooked up to OTA) to the unconnected TV and feed that TV wirelessly. Sound too good to be true? Well, I don't know much about it but someone at Best Buy was insisting that it worked. But I never tried it because I went with a second, dedicated antenna for my bedroom. So it made all of this other stuff a moot point in my case. But GroundUrMast might have some good feedback on this wireless device for getting OTA signals from one TV (that is fed with OTA) to another in the house that is not hooked up at all.
Scott
PS I am just curious. Did you decide (from last winter) to permanently go with a rotator on the outdoor chimney mount Winegard. Of have you just left it pointed in one direction?