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I need an antenna splitter and some new coax cables for my setup.
My wall outlet is a male PAL (belling-lee) socket and the tv card has two fem PAL sockets.
I bought a cheap 2-way splitter which ruined my relatively good reception and the only ones I've seen online are "F-type" splitters (gonna get a 4-way incase I get another card)
Also, does the splitter connect directly to the wall socket (or in this case to the adaptor) or do I need an additional (shorter) cable to go from the wall socket to the splitter?
You are certainly heading down the right track and what you describe will wok to split the signal. Remember the key word here is "split". At the end of the day there is only so much signal and the more you split it with passive splitters the weaker it gets, hence poor reception on the end device. So don't assume that you got poor reception because of a poor quality splitter, maybe there is just not enough signal to split, regardless of the quality of the passive device.
For a simple illustration assume you have a signal strength of 1 now for your "relatively good reception" then split it 4 ways, each outlet now has 0.25 strength, this may lead to some devices still working and others not having enough signal. Splitting is not that simple and some splitters do degrade the signal more than others, but fundamentally they all work.
It is possible that you need to get an active splitter, that means one that boosts the signal as it splits via an amplifier.
You can connect your splitter directly to the wall or via a short cable, either is fine.
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Too many toys is still not enough.
The following Member(s) said "Thank You!" to DDH for this information:
Id go with a powered splitter, I got the same brand splitter you're looking at in a 2 way splitter, quality went from perfect on every channel, to barely watchable through analog, and missing several channels in digital.
I wouldnt bother with a crimper, Just get twist on F connectors.
I've used RG6 a stanley knife and twist on F connectors for all my antenna cabling. One masthead amp, 4 splitters giving 12 connections in total using nearly a full 100m roll and I'm still happy with them.
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Too many toys is still not enough.
Twist on F-connectors are not really recommended. They can certainly lead to poor connections. They may work OK if you are very careful, but longterm they can play up. Not worth the risk IMO.
Up a level from twist on F-connectors connectors (which really are at about the lowest rung on the ladder) are the crimp type. They make a more reliable connection.
Better yet are the compression type F-connectors, which give a consistently reliable connection.
and put it between the wall outlet and the 2 tuners on the VMC and the TV input. I Use quad shield coax from the antenna (using twist on F connector) to the wall outlet.
It works for me - I bought a cable with F connector on one end and the TV connector on the other to go from the splitter to the VMC & TV.
I also put a terminator on the unused outlets on the splitter.
It all works fine for me - then again I have direct line-of-sight to the TXer which is only 1.99 ks away (measured on G/earth) - only fog, rain and air get in the way of my signal.
The following Member(s) said "Thank You!" to skypilot for this information:
Alright so I went out and bought the Kingray 4 output splitter, some RG6 cable and that stripper/crimper combo dealy. Tested it out and managed to strip some cable easily enough so I guess I'm halfway there...
Erm.. without sounding too ignorant Jaycar has "crimp connectors" and "crimp plugs", I need the plugs, right? So some of these
and not these
or even these
Sorry i wasn't more specific in my original post by I actually have the Compro E900F card which funnily enough has no passive splitter but two coax inputs, main reason for the splitter anyway.
I would play it by ear with the powered splitter if I were you. I had bad reception issues early on and installed a quality powered splitter which had very little effect. In the end I had my antenna replaced and cabling with coax and it didn't need a powered splitter at all over 5 connections. It can be a bit of a trap since digital signal seems not to like overamplification.
I would play it by ear with the powered splitter if I were you. I had bad reception issues early on and installed a quality powered splitter which had very little effect. In the end I had my antenna replaced and cabling with coax and it didn't need a powered splitter at all over 5 connections. It can be a bit of a trap since digital signal seems not to like overamplification.
That's very true. The important thing with digital reception is the quality of the signal, not so much the strength.
It is always better to get in as good a signal as possible off-air, rather than try to make up for a poor signal through amplification. As long as the strength is adequate, it will be the Bit Error Rate (BER) that will dictate whether you get reliable reception or not.
The signal level may need to be boosted if it is adequate for one outlet, but you need to split it across a few.
The other thing to bear in mind with boosting is that there may be a whole lot of other undesirable frequencies coming in that will be boosted as well. And these could cause signal overload. There is a note here on this.
