DIY Doctor UK DIY Forums

Hi All,

This is my first post so if I don't make sense please dont kill me.

I am attempting to put an aerial point into 3 bedrooms, living room and kitchen. At present when I brought the house there is only a aerial socket in the living room already. There is an aerial in the loft and a wire directly connecting down inside the stud wall to the socket. I have attempted to put a splitter in (generic white from b and q) this had a male input to 3 female output. However the quality on my digital tv went down from 80% to 10% when it went through the splitter. However I am unsure if this is because of the quality of the splitter, since I have seen F-Type splitters on screwfix and wonder if they would produce a different result.

Otherwise I need to by some sort of distribution amp however I do not have a power sockets in the loft yet, so I was wondering if you can suggest a distribution amp that does not require a external power source or perhaps there is an alternative solution you can think of.

If a distribution amp without a external power source doesnt exsist then could anyone suggest a 6 way distribution amp, if people have tried one please give feedback on them.

Many thanks for all help and advice in advance.

Phil

You can't get something for nothing so a Y splitter will reduce your signal somewhere you must use power to get all TV's to work. But here's the good news there are "Mast head amplifiers" designed to go outside and they take there power up the coax from a unit that plugs in by the TV. There are many different makes and types that work just with TV or with TV and Radio and even with TV Radio and Satellite and they cost form a few pounds to £100 depending on what they do. I ran two cables from the loft and send the satellite and video recorder outputs to all bedrooms too. You will get them both in places like screwfix and better more expensive ones in Maplin and if you go to proper Ariel installer you can some real fancy ones. As to power in loft I am sure it could be found but I am not saying how or someone will rap my fingers. Better aerial or more aerials would also help the are rated in db gain and your Y splitters are ratted db loss so simple maths if Y splitter loses 6db and new aerial is 6db better then they will work out the same. Maybe you have an airing cupboard or wardrobe where you can mount booster and take all cables down and back up to loft. I hope that helps?

Hi Eric

Many thanks for all the advice first of all, a massive help!

Wow! Now that would be really good getting sat tv and dvd into the rest of the rooms as well, it would be in game show terms "Double Money" or "Super Match Game". Otherwise in normal terms it would just be excellent.

Another person suggested to me a "Mast head amplifier" so I think I will definatly go down that route!

Thanks also for the tips on the db rating, I didn't know how to measure how good things were until you mentioned it. So any idea how I would work out how many db my current aerial has? This is just one I got when I brought the house, it has been pretty good for just the one TV but dont know how it will fair for all 4/5 tv's I might eventually have, even with the mast head!