My suggestion would be that you start at the beginning, the antenna(s). Prove reliable reception at the antenna, with no accessories such as splitters, combiners or amplifiers... just the antenna (one antenna at a time), a short coax and a known good TV. Once you have a reliable signal to work with you can build the rest of the system.
Too often people (myself included) assemble a complex system, then try to fix symptoms by adding more complexity (amplifiers seem to be the favorite 'fix' for any and all reception trouble). Rule of thumb:
Simple is usually far more reliable than complicated. (AKA: KISS)
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- The preamp power - does this matter where in the line once in the house it is added?
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There is usually a fair amount of flexibility regarding the length of cable between the preamp and power supply. The typical preamp power supply is best attached to the opposite end of the same coax connected to the output of the preamp. Most installations use no more than 100' of coax for this run, but the run can be longer. In specialized applications, running power through a splitter or combiner may be a requirement. The splitter or combiner would need to be designed to pass power on the correct ports. The documentation for the preamp and splitter or combiner will need to be read and understood.
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- I noticed the diplexer I bought says its for antenna/cable and satellite combining... does that matter? The philly antenna is running through the SAT input and the NY antenna is running through the CAB/ANT input.
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It matters. This is one of the reasons you see little from Philly. TV/SAT Diplexers are not appropriate for combining two OTA TV antennas, The SAT port is filtered, intended to allow frequencies above the OTA TV bands. Satellite dishes are typically equipped with a low noise block converter (LNB) which converts the signals from the satellite (roughly 12 GHz in the Ku band) to a range between 1 & 2.5 Ghz. This is a frequency range that RG-6 coax can support with far less loss. The SAT port is blocking most if not all of the Philly signals... which may actually help your NY reception by blocking interfering reception from the Philly aimed antenna.
If you are trying to combine two antennas that are receiving signals from the same band, UHF or VHF, your chances of success are not 0%... but they're far less than %100. You can try a common 2-way splitter connected backwards... but most folks that try this find the signals from each antenna interfere with each other, resulting in less reliable reception from one or both antennas.
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- Once I start splitting off to additional TVs, should I add a amplifier somewhere at the first split?
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Another rule of thumb: One amplifier can be too many. Two amplifiers are almost always too many.
Amplifiers are only able to 'push' signal through loss. An amplifier can not 'pull' signal from an antenna or out of the air. Amplifiers add noise and distortion to the signal so using an amplifier can make reception worse if it's it's not needed, the wrong type or installed in the wrong place.
The best place for an amplifier is 'upstream' of the loss(es) that it's intended to overcome. Yet another rule of thumb: More is not always better. Know the amount of loss you need to overcome, use only the amplification needed. Loss is expressed in decibels (dB). Simply add the loss values in dB. RG-6 should have no more than 6 dB loss per 100'. Splitters should be labeled but expect a 2-way splitter to have no more than 4 dB loss, a 4-way... 8dB, 8-way... 12 dB.