any advice

[wade]

Hi, i've put an old 1foot by one foot uhf antenna on the side of my chimmney facing the most signal direction and it seems to get most things well but not as strong as i'd hoped...i've got a white cable going two stories down to the basement to a eight way splitter with four cables going to various t.v.s...some work well others not so well...one t.v. has the built in tuner{sony wega 34 wide screen } others are old analogs with cheaper converters...I have the cables as short as possible...do signal boosters really do anything? Seems i've tried them and never had any real difference...do I get a new antenna(as small as possible please) or something else??? I'm at zip 53225 thanks for listening to my babble ...

[tigerbangs]

Well, we can definitely help you! You are very close to your transmitters, so signals are strong. That 8-way splitter in your basement is what's causing you problems. It isn't clear from your post if you have all 8 ports on ths splitter used, or only 4 of them. When you are splitting off to 4 or 8 tuners like that, the splitting and line losses are greater than the gain that the antenna provides, so you are actually in a significant signal-loss situation . This is where a good distribution amplifier will help you. If you are using all 8 connections on your splitter, and powering 8 tuners, then buy a Winegard HDA-200 distribution amplifier and mount it in the antenna line BEFORE the splitter: it will provide enough gain to power 8 TV sets by overcoming cable and splitter losses.

If you only have 4 cables run from that splitter and don't anticipate using any more TVs, the replace the 8-way splitter with a high-qualioty 1 gHz or better low-loss splitter. The 4-way splitter will have considerably less splitting loss that will the 8-way. In any event , I suggest that you use the HDA-200 amplifier to overcome the losses inherent in so large a split. The HDA-200 requires AC power, so be sure that it is available where you mount the amplifier.

Try this solution before you play with the antenna: I think that the amplifier alone should solve your problems.

[wade]

thank you tigerbangs! No i'm not using all eight ports but should probably just get the better amp, i'm sure i'll be adding at least one more,i'll probably start with a new hd antenna, the uhf antenna i put up is old and rickety...thanks again, wade

[tigerbangs]

I wold look at a Winegard HD-1080 or a Channel Master 4221HD: Both are fairly small, and will also do VHF

[wade]

thanks again! Wade