Hello all,
Here is my TVFool
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...1ddae3fe955096
My eyes are beginning to bleed from all of the reading that I have been doing. I have been on the roof and in my craw space everyday for a week and a half trying to figure this out. I've gone through 3 antennas (currently using 2 of the 3 with a UHF/VHF combiner) Here is what I have.
As you can see from the tvfool report, im not too far away from the transmitters but I'm guessing that its just a problem area? My house is in a bit of a valley and my antennas are pointed at a hill in the direction of the desired channel sources. They are roof mounted on a 15ft mast. The CS5 and the DB8 are separated by about 4 ft on the mast.
I've got an Antennas Direct DB8 for UHF and a clear steam 5 for VHF. The CS5 included a VHF/UHF combiner that I'm using with RG6 going straight into the house (apx 100ft maybe less) to a $66 high gain Radio Shack pre-amp, of course running through the mast mounted pre-amp component. The pre-amp is 1 in and 2 out setting in the living room right beside my home theater. One of those "out leads" is a 3ft RG6 line going to an HDhomerun dual network tuner (HDHR) which is wired to my whole home cat 6 LAN network. The second "line out" on the pre-amp is running back under the house to another TV in the bedroom (about 50ft). This run splits off about half way into my office to my HTPC. This feeds a PCI on-board tuner. So that's 1 split on the pre-amp and one split into the office.
My goal here is to get ABC, NBC, CBS & Fox and use Windows media center as my DVR and XBOX 360's as extenders. Now that you know my setup, here is the issues.
NBC is a constant, ABC is super direction-ally sensitive, CBS comes in but with poor signal quality and has never been stable and FOX shows up every now and then but has never been stable. If I get the antennas point just right and tweak the pre-amp I can get all 4 at the same time but with no real consistency and only do i see this if running straight to my Samsung's built-in tuner. The HDhomerun seems to be not near as sensitive as the TV's built-in tuner. I can switch from the TV's tuner to the HDHR and the results cut in half.
Here is my troubleshooting path so far:
1: Only a few days ago did I learn about pre-amp overload. The Radio Crap pre-amp has a booster switch and a gain dial. I have tested virtually every possible setting on this device (booster on, booster off and the gain dial in just about every possible position in both scenarios). The best results are as mentioned above. My gut is telling me that this pre-amp is the problem. Logic is telling me that my current results are the best that it can be (i sure hope not). Here is more info on the pre-amp if it helps
http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...9&locale=en_US
1: I tried eliminating the pre-amp all together which cut me down to almost nothing. RG6 run is just too long i guess.
4:Tried using only one antenna (tried both). Direct run from single antenna to the amp, from the amp to the TV and or the HDHR.
5: Raised the mast from about 6ft to 15ft (i havent moved the antenna to different locations on the roof yet because I'm using an old dish mast as my base. I guess i'll try that next.
I am running out of ideas. Is this pre-amp crap and I need another one?
Is this as good as it gets?
What am I missing?
Please help me