Selective amplification?

[gadgetguy]

I am having a problem with one of the OTA digital stations. To make a long story short, I've dropped Comcast and have gone to an external antenna. I've installed DTV converter boxes and a MyHD MDP130 to receive the digital OTA transmissions and I can receive about 20 channels. However, to receive a couple of them I had to install a line amp.
For most of the converter boxes this works fine, but on one channel, the closest and strongest, the amplification causes an overdrive condition that makes the channel unreadable by the MyHD MDP130. If I remove the amp, it receives the channel with no problem, but then the weaker channels don't come in. I am sharing this antenna with several TVs in the house and I would like the ability to be able to watch both the strongest and weakest channels at the same time. I believe that it should be technically possible to only amplify certain frequencies and pass others untouched, but I don't know if there's a consumer level product to do this. Does anyone know of one? Or what such a device would be called so I could do a search?

[yoda313]

I think that you might start searching for something about "gain". If I remember right basic antennas have a gain feature and I think that is what you are experience, too much gain. I'm sure there must be limiters but I wouldn't know of any off hand.

Hopefully this will get you started in the right direction. Mind you though I may be completely wrong but that is my interpretation of your situation.

Perhaps EDDV or LORDSMURF would be able to chime in for you. I'm sure they have much more realworld experience in this type of situation. Good luck.

[jagabo]

You're looking for a notch filter. I don't know if you can get one narrow enough to block/limit a single channel.

[johns0]

http://www.spectrummicrowave.com/attenuators.asp?type=GoogleAdwordsSearch&Adgroup=digitalattn

[gadgetguy]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but aren't these limiters? I would prefer to just amplify the necessary frequencies, rather than amplify the whole spectrum and then selectively limit, if it's possible.

[jagabo]

It's much easier and cheaper to filter out or tone down what you don't want.

[redwudz]

Single channel UHF attenuators won't be cheap. If you don't mind the cabling, you could just get a switch box and use a inexpensive untuned attenuator and switch it in when viewing that one channel. Feed the two outputs into a splitter to combine them back to a single line for the display device. The splitter will cause some loss, but should be tolerable. Just one suggestion.

[gadgetguy]

OK, I guess I didn't explain my goals very well, so let me paint a broader picture. In addition to wanting to be able to watch both the weakest and strongest channels at the same time, I want the MyHD MDP130 to be able to tune in all of the channels without manual intervention.

For example:
I want to use the MyHD MDP130 to timeshift two programs while I'm out one night. The first program I want to capture is on the weakest channel. It starts at 7:00pm and runs for an hour. The second program is on the strongest channel starting at 9:00pm, it also runs for an hour. Obviously any solution with a manual switch will not work because I won't be there.

I want to somewhat balance the signal strength of the various channels so that all of the channels are visible to all of the tuner devices in the house without having to make any changes to the antenna system.

To further complicate this, I'm finding it hard to understand what frequencies I'll need to attenuate. Apparently, the channel number given in the description from the station is not necessarily the same as the channel number that defines the frequency range. Maybe someone more knowledgeable than me can shed some light on this?