Distribution Amp

Support & Troubleshooting
1

I live within 15 miles of all my accessible towers. Signal strength is not a problem, but my home is centrally located amongst the towers. Thus at least 270 degrees between the different towers I am pulling signals from. I have a multi-directional antenna pulling both VHF & UHF signals.

For the most part I don’t have signal problems, but yesterday we had storms moving through during a college football game I recorded. The recording suffered from substantial pixilation issues. I’m just wondering since I have a 4-turner Tablo with 25’ of cable between my attic mounted antenna & my Tablo, would a distribution amp located just before my Tablo help under such conditions?

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no. Distribution amps are intended for situations where a normally good signal needs to be repetitively split to many devices, not normally good signals. (basically needing to split your signal to a bunch of devices)

a low noise PREAMP at the antenna end may/ may not help to mitigate any losses from the 25’ cable, but may inflict overdriving problems if you already have good signal strength as you mentioned. Signal QUALITY seems to be your issue vice signal STRENGTH. The only thing that I know of to improve that is improving line of sight between you and the broadcaster’s antenna.

3

But a 4 tuner Tablo splits the signal 4 ways (sending a 1/4 of the signal to each tuner) just the same as if it were split & sent to 4 different devices.

1 Like
4

The internal 1x4 splitter in the Tablo is amplified though to minimize any signal degradation.

5

Ok, thanks.

I do believe it was the bad weather. I recorded 3 NFL games Sunday & the picture was great for all three & the weather was beautiful.

6

Aha!

So the answer is to prevent the bad weather during your football games.

7

Kartajan, could there potentially be a weak signal during a storm (increased attenuation in the air)? In that case I think a low noise amp at the antenna might potentially help a bit IF there is significant loss in the 25’ of cable (depends on frequency) AND (as you say) the amplifier doesn’t increase the signal too much and cause distortion.

rccolts, do you know what RF frequency the station was at?

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I believe the station’s frequency is 663.

Has anyone else experienced signal/pixelation issues during inclement weather on channels that are normally fine?

My friend said he wasn’t aware that bad weather could effect RF signals &/or at least that he has never had that problem.

9

Lightning storms, being electrical in nature, will disrupt RF transmission in their vicinity. Had that happen over the years. A friend’s preamp was knocked out due to a lightning flash nearby. Also winds moving tree branches will disrupt an RF transmission’s path and cause multipath (and pixelation). If an antenna is in an attic, rain will wet the roof and that attenuates signals beyond what a roof normally does.

Some of these symptoms may be also at the broadcast transmitter’s end and not necessarily at the receiver’s end. A few months ago we had severe lightning storms in the vicinity of the broadcast towers but not at my end (thirty miles away). That affected my reception on several 100% signal strength channels.

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