Capturing - Need advice on using a SPLITTER for tv / modem !

[DVantrease]

This is indirectly related to video capturing. I have a tv capture card, and also a cable modem. I have one cable wire coming into the room, originally installed for the modem, and thought I could just run it thru a splitter and run it to my cable modem and tv capture card simultaniously. I assumed I could use 'standard' stuff (ie. Radio Shack) but apparently not. After splitting the signal, I found that my modem would regularly drop offline, even thought I'm not really using the tv side yet (I only confirmed that it worked). So I'm assuming splitting 'weakens' the signal to the modem. Is there some specific hardware I should use for doing this, and if so, where can I buy it?

[Big_Jit]

You might need to get the amplifier since splitting a signal does weaken it on both sides and while you're not using the tv side you should get a terminating resistor for it also available at Radio Shack:

Amplifier:

http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&category%5Fname=CTLG%5F002%5...5Fid=15%2D1171

Terminating resistors:

http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&category%5Fname=CTLG%5F002%5...5Fid=15%2D1144

[sterno]

Well, yes, splitting does weaken the signal, there's only so much power on the line and you can't get something for nothing. If you live in an apartment that has more than one cable jack they almost certainly have a splitter in the wall behind every jack, so if you're trying to use an outlet close to the end of the chain it's already been split repeatedly. The other problem with a splitter is that a lot of the cheap splitters can't handle the high frequencies that cable modems use, so you lose a lot more of the cable modem signal than you do of a conventional TV signal.

I ran in to both of those problems at my last apartment. The cable guys replaced the splitter behind the wall and about doubled the cable modem signal strength at the second jack. They also gave me a band-pass filter to put on the back of the cable modem, it blocks out any signal that's outside the range used for data signals. You might call your cable modem support line and ask if they can either give you a splitter known to work (some places will give them out for free to customers, if you ask politely) or tell you what models are known to work reliably.