Do cable signal boosters work?

[El Bart0]

I have cable TV and a single cable running into the house...I have a 3 way splitter splitting it into my TV card, my cable modem, and a cable running upstairs to the cable TV. The lower channels (mainly 2-7) have very poor picture quality. I saw a Motorola cable signal booster at the store and I was wondering if this would solve my problem? Anyone have any experience with these?

[BJ_M]

most of those will kill or degrade your cable modem ..

cable modems need 1ghz splitters and line amps ... most are 900mhz tops ..

best though is not to use a splitter at all for your cable modem ..

more in likely you have a unterminated connection or bad connector or bad cable ..

for only three connections - a booster is not needed .. unless you are getting very low input to your headend connection .. if so your cable company should fix it ..

some places (cable companys) do feed more customeers than what they should and also may have bad underground or tower cable feeds and are either to cheap or unwilling to fix it.

complaining - a lot - helps - sometimes ..

[Craig Tucker]

Mine is split after it comes out of the cable box, So I have a regular coax 10 way TV splitter/booster directly after the cable box which feeds my 6 TV's and my PC. Picture on all TV's and PC is very good.

[Faustus]

I used to have a split before the cable modem, the cable off of it went a VERY long way to the TV, so I used a booster, worked fine.

[susie]

Is this the Cable Booster you guys are talking about ?

[jeex]

Is this the Cable Booster you guys are talking about ?

i have one of those.. except mine splits the signal to 4 tv's.. it works really really good.. before i would get really snowy pictures on all but one of the televisions.. now it comes in crystal clear on all the televisions..

i dont have a cable modem, so i dont know how it reacts to one..

[susie]

So yours have 4 outputs ? How much did you pay for yours ?

It doesn't work with cable modem.


[quote="jeex"]

Is this the Cable Booster you guys are talking about ?

i have one of those.. except mine splits the signal to 4 tv's.. it works really really good.. before i would get really snowy pictures on all but one of the televisions.. now it comes in crystal clear on all the televisions..

i dont have a cable modem, so i dont know how it reacts to one..

[jeex]

it's been about 3 years.. i think i paid $39 for it at my local radio shack

[susie]

jeex, thanks for the info.

[boss]

i've used 2 different boosters but neither improved the picture qaulity. it seemed fine on some tv's but was bad on others. does anyone know if any of the boosters sold by argos work? i'm thinking of getting one.

[Faustus]

Actually when I was using mine it was rather complicated. We had the cable jack in the living room that was for the cable modem, and it was the only jack in the house. We had to have a splitter on to help kill the signal down some for the modem to work, but because of the way the living room was layed out it was a long way to the TV and looked bad by the time it got there. So I used another splitter and put a booster right before it, then ran a line into the TV.

Since I couldn't rewire my appartment without upsetting the complex I then ran a GAINT cable to my bedroom along the wall and put yet ANOTHER booster in there right before my TV. Worked great for about 6 months, then poof one of them died and had to be replaced. It would power on but didn't seem to help the signal anymore. About 2 months after that POOF the other died and had to be replaced...

anyway I think they are made pretty low quality is what I'm saying, but for me they worked great while they lasted.

[zzyzzx]

i've used 2 different boosters but neither improved the picture qaulity. it seemed fine on some tv's but was bad on others. does anyone know if any of the boosters sold by argos work? i'm thinking of getting one.

That's because in most cases a generic fixed boost doesn't work. What you really need is a boost that is adjustable. If you want to split it then you might need to further attenuate some of the feeds (so essentially you use one amplifier to boost the total sum but still have adjustable feeds to each location).

Notice the "gain" adjustment on this one:


And Radio Shacks prices on these kinds of things is a rip. Buy it online if you have to but at least check WalMart first.

[boss]

a shame there is'nt a walmart or radioshack in ireland.....
i don't think an american booster would work in europe, would it?

[zzyzzx]

a shame there is'nt a walmart or radioshack in ireland.....
i don't think an american booster would work in europe, would it?

I'm not sure. But I am reasonably sure that the antenna connectors are different.

[Craig Tucker]

a shame there is'nt a walmart or radioshack in ireland.....
i don't think an american booster would work in europe, would it?

I'm not sure. But I am reasonably sure that the antenna connectors are different.

Difficult to tell from your picture, but they look different.