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

[Brian Wood]

R. G. Newbury wrote:
> Brian Wood wrote:
>> 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
> 
> It's not a capture card problem. I have 4 tuners: 2 analog in the 
> PVR-500, and 2 digital in the HDHR.
> 
> My wife wants to channel surf. Although she appreciates the advantages 
> of the mythbox over the VCRs, there are still ocassional problems which 
> cause her to want to avoid using the mythbox directly.
> 
> What I was attempting to do, was feed the antenna and the cable into the 
> single coax input on the TV. Like most TV's it only has a single coax. 
> While cyber-shopping, I found a page which stated that the Sony 
> KDL-37XBR4 had two coax inputs. A physical examination dashed that hope.
> The LG treats Antenna and Cable as just 2 different input sources, so I 
> can switch using the remote...IF I can actually switch or combine the input.
> 
> Since combining is a No-Go....anyone have any ideas for a remotely 
> controlled switch?  (Lirc is expandible and can do so much!)
> 

I have cable going into 2 capture cards and satellite into a third.

Since the channel numbers do not overlap (cable is all <100, satellite
all >100) I have no problems, the system automatically switches to the
proper card for whatever channel I select.

I wonder if you could edit the channel numbers of the OTA channels so
they were outside the range of your cable channels (perhaps just prepend
a "9" or something like that)?

Just a thought.

beww