[mythtv-users] Coax splitters - how painful are they?

[Brian Wood]

R. G. Newbury wrote:

> Well I DO NOT FEAR a visit from the FAA....it would be the DoT up here 
> in the 'frozen north' (that describes our bureaucracies not our weather!)


Actually I believe it would be the DoC, at the behest of the DoT.
> 
> Seriously, I want to combine a cable feed and an antenna through 
> combiner, and feed one coax to the TV. Either feed alone is fine and I 
> can switch them, but through a (cheap) combiner I get nothing watchable.
> 
> Both signals have already been split: the cable coax to feed the 
> mythbox, and the antenna has already been boosted (by a medium-cheap) 
> amp, and split three ways, 2 of which feed the HDHR unit,
> 
> This may not be the best setup.. I do not know. I do suspect that I need 
> better splitters than the el-cheapo's I had in the bottom of a box of junk.

Combining OA and cable is frought with problems, you not only can't have
 the same channels on both feeds, but adjacent ones can pose problems as
well. You need to balance levels, taking into consideration that the
levels from a CATV system can vary as much as 12 db. in a 24 hour period.

If it were me I'd use two different capture devices, one for OA and one
for cable, as a capture card is probably cheaper then the gear to
properly do such a combining.

But that's me, and the "land of the cheap (capture cards that is).

beww