Antenna wiring question- new home

Jea1972 · 23-Jan-2018, 8:40 PM

This forum helped me cut the cord a few years ago with some great suggestions and recommendations.

I recently purchased a new home and once again am looking for any assistance.

My new home is a 2 story model. The “distribution” box is located on the exterior of the home. There is a satellite currently installed on the roof that is not in use. There are coaxial cables currently running from the satellite into a 4 way splitter inside the “distribution” box. Additionally in the “distribution” box is a separate feed from the cable company coming up from an underground feed. The cable feed then runs down into the crawl space underneath the house.

There are a total of 8 coaxial outlet boxes in the house: 4 on the 1st floor & the other 4 on the 2nd floor. The 4 on the 1st floor are fed in through the crawl space. The 4 on the 2nd floor are fed in up through the attic.

There are conflicting coaxial cords currently in the crawl space and attic(assuming from the satellite and cable companies?) with many cables not currently attached. I also found several splitters just laying around so it looks like the lines have been altered previously.

I would like to install my existing antenna (RCA ANT751R) in my attic and split between the 8 coaxial outlets. I have an HOA in place and am not sure about exterior antenna limitations etc.

Given the circumstances I described above what would be the best way to go about trying to make this happen? I realize I will need to keep my antenna wiring system separate from the internet service that I need to have set up.

Below is the TV Fool report for my new home.

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...60edbf6627d368

Sorry for the long winded message, just wanted to try and adequately explain the situation.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

rickbb · 24-Jan-2018, 8:44 PM

Sorry, but the existing cable may or may not work. (Most likely not.)

Cable and Sat TV signals are so strong that installers are not trained to even care about how they install or when or where to split it.

Assuming a single 8 way split, (in my experience it's not, more like several splits in places you can't get to), each outlet will only have 1/8 of the signal you feed to the splitter.

As I said, this is not a problem with Cable and Sat TV, but with OTA it will degrade the strength and quality of the feed greatly.

You will need to use a tone generator to trace out and isolate the cable feeds just to the rooms you will actually have a TV in. Then put in a new broadcast amp splitter to feed just those runs.

Even that is going to have issues. I just finished my daughters house, she had a similar problem. There are 2 rooms that are fed from the same cable in the distro box with a splitter hidden somewhere either in the wall or between floors when the house was built. It gets a degraded signal in both rooms compared to the other 3 runs I tested out.

Getting decent signal where she wanted it took for ever, (days), and several different amp and splitter combinations to get it running.

Worse case scenario is re-wire the house correctly for OTA standards.

The HOA issue is moot, the FCC has prohibited HOA's and even local governments from preventing you from reasonable methods of receiving OTA signals. Your ANT751 is a very reasonable method. (A 10 meter RF telescope on the other hand would not be.) Nothing they can do about it.

Jea1972 · 25-Jan-2018, 3:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickbb

Sorry, but the existing cable may or may not work. (Most likely not.)

Cable and Sat TV signals are so strong that installers are not trained to even care about how they install or when or where to split it.

Assuming a single 8 way split, (in my experience it's not, more like several splits in places you can't get to), each outlet will only have 1/8 of the signal you feed to the splitter.

As I said, this is not a problem with Cable and Sat TV, but with OTA it will degrade the strength and quality of the feed greatly.

You will need to use a tone generator to trace out and isolate the cable feeds just to the rooms you will actually have a TV in. Then put in a new broadcast amp splitter to feed just those runs.

Even that is going to have issues. I just finished my daughters house, she had a similar problem. There are 2 rooms that are fed from the same cable in the distro box with a splitter hidden somewhere either in the wall or between floors when the house was built. It gets a degraded signal in both rooms compared to the other 3 runs I tested out.

Getting decent signal where she wanted it took for ever, (days), and several different amp and splitter combinations to get it running.

Worse case scenario is re-wire the house correctly for OTA standards.

The HOA issue is moot, the FCC has prohibited HOA's and even local governments from preventing you from reasonable methods of receiving OTA signals. Your ANT751 is a very reasonable method. (A 10 meter RF telescope on the other hand would not be.) Nothing they can do about it.

Thanks for the feedback and information. If I need to end up rewiring the home can you please advise what is the correct way for OTA standards?

I appreciate all the assistance.

Jake V · 25-Jan-2018, 6:08 PM

I would start by tracing the cable and doing a diagram of what you have and posting it here.

For example:

Satellite > 25 feet to distribution box > then 25 feet each tv (do full diagram with estimated measurements of cable lengths to each tv).

If there are more splitters after the distribution box, include them in the diagram.

Also post what type of coax cable was used. RG-6, RG-56, etc. It will say on the cable.

If you're lucky, you may have direct lines to each television from the one distribution box. If that is the case, and if decent cable was used, you might be able to re-purpose the cable for your OTA signals, sending the signal from a new distribution box only to the outlets where you have televisions.