Got 27 Channels in Basement, 4 in Living Room with same antenna position and cable

[helpmeplease]

We're stumped. We have a Clearstream 2 antenna and a Sony Bravia Digital LCD TV.

We started by trying the antenna with a short cable to the TV. On the ground, outside our sunroom (adjacent to the living room) we got 27 channels - all the local ones we'd expect.

We tried the short cable with the antenna in the living room. No channels at all.

So we mount the antenna about 16ft up on the side of the house pointing at 218 which is what we got the 27 channels with and what it would seem from our chart should work, then snake cable down to the cellar where all our coax is routed from for the house. Back up to the living room. Tune. One channel - PBS on 2. Not perfect either.

Next we try just connecting the TV to the cable direct from the antenna without connecting into the house coax set up (which we wanted for splitting and using another TV in the kitchen at some point). 27 channels crystal in the cellar. Yay, we thought.

So, same cable, same length, same connections just pushed up to the living room from the cellar. Tune. 4 channels (2.1, 2.2, 4.1 and 5.1).

Tried redoing the connections. No success.

What on earth could make it receive all the channels in the cellar but not in the living room with the same connections and cable length?

Your help is most appreciated.

Thanks!

Here's our chart: http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...a3622efea31c9f

[John Candle]

Me thinks it's the cable that is being moved from the basement to the living room is bad. A cable can look good from the outside , but have internal problems. As the cable is wiggeld and moved a broken center wire can make contact and not make contact or the internal structure might be compromised to allow the shielding part of the wire coax to touch the center wire. Or maybe the shielding part of the coax is broken or missing in some parts of the coax. I always look in the end part of the coax connector , so as to see if the outer metal shielding part of the coax has been pushed in toward the center wire conductor. If it has , I push the shielding away from the center conductor and scrape away any fine metal that might be on foam that separates the center wire from the outer shielding. . Also the center wire might be too long out past the end of the connector. Trim the wire back so the center wire is just beyond the end of the connector. Also if the center wire is cut to short and is down inside the connector , the center wire will not make contact. Substitution of known to be good coax and other componets will find the bad. Do not take the antenna in the house , keep it out side. The house can be of a construction of meterials like metal or thick/dence blocks that block reception. . Some coax has a loose fitting outer plastic jacket that allows all of the internal parts of the coax to slip and slide inside the jacket , this is not good.

[mtownsend]

Hello and welcome!

Here are a few thoughts:

1) Is it the same TV tested at each of the locations in the house? If not, each make/model of TV might have a different tuner design that can make it perform better/worse under different situations (i.e., different levels of multipath, signal-to-noise ratio, interference, etc.). If different TVs were used in the tests, also make sure that each one is properly set up for "Air" TV as opposed to "cable" TV, if the menus allow for such an option.

2) Is there any interference getting into the cable? RG59 coax is thin and poorly shielded. RG6 is thicker and has better shielding. RG6Q (quad shield) has even more shielding and is even more resistant to signal ingress. If the coax runs parallel to a lot of electrical wiring or goes near "noisy" electrical equipment (e.g., vacuum cleaners, microwave ovens, etc.), it might be picking up interference which can make reception more difficult.

3) Make sure that there are no kinks (sharp bends), cuts, shorts (between center and outer conductors), or crushed portions of the cable. You may want to do a continuity test to make sure everything is as it should be. If both ends of the cable are left open (not connected to anything), then you should read an open circuit (infinite resistance between center conductor and outer shield) from either end of the cable. If you then short one end (connect center conductor to outer shield), you should be able to read a closed circuit (low resistance) from the other end of the cable.

4) Test without the coax distribution network first (I'm assuming you mean the same coax that was used to distribute cable TV throughout the house). Are you sure that there is no signal still coming from the cable company's signal feed? Cable TV and OTA TV cover many of the same frequencies, so if the system is still hooked up to the cable company in any way, there might be two sets of signals interfering with each other. If you want to use the pre-existing cable, you must make sure that the network is completely disconnected from the cable company's feed into your house. You may even want to put a terminator on the cable company's feed just to make sure there's no "signal leakage" that might be picked up elsewhere.

5) Assuming that you're able to figure out how to get reliable reception from your antenna feed, when you get around to testing the cable distribution network, there are a few things to check... a) See if there are any distribution amplifiers in the setup and, if there are any, make sure you're sending your antenna feed into the right port. b) If there are any unused ports on the network (i.e., unused ports on splitters, open-ended cables in any of the rooms, etc.), I recommend that you put 75-ohm terminators on them to prevent any signal reflection back into the cable network.



If you're testing with the same TV or set-top box in each location, have you tried comparing the signal quality readings (usually available in the menus of most receivers) from each location? The exact scale of these signal quality meters is usually set arbitrarily, but it might give you a clue as to whether you're up against a gradual degradation of the signal from one room to the next, or if you're dealing with a more severe signal drop of some kind (e.g., a short in one of the connectors).