Experiencing learning curve trying to post this question.
10 days into cord cutting and I am happy with 95% of my experience. I get minor pixilation on some of my recordings. I have verified that the distortion of both sound an picture occurs at the same spot each time I view the recording. Based on other posts, I assuming weak signal from the antenna. (40 miles from channel 8 and ION in Dallas). I have not experienced any distortion when watching live Tv and I check the channels regularly on live tv. Really good live picture and good picture most of the time on recorded. Pixilation so far is an irration lasting seconds and most of the time the sound continues so the story line is not lost.
I see Channelmaster pushing their Amplify amp with cell filters. Would that be worth trying for $60? My wifi is also side by side with my Tablo, should I move the router? I am in an apartment sourronded by wifi and cell phones.
I don’t want to be a fanatic about this but I want to do everything I can reasonable do.
Do you think the Channelmaster sounds like a good choice for me. Channelmaster’s web site say I have a 30 day return guarentee.
4 tuner Tablo
Channelmaster Smartenna on balcony
Netgear 100 g route
40 feet of coax
Roku 3
40 miles plus to towers. Website yellow rating. Green on Tablo scan
Using an amp with high gain like +15 db can cause more problems by over-amplifying the strong stations which can overload the Tablo front-end amplifiers. If splitters are being used which can cause a -3 db loss, a better bet would be to use a distribution amp with multiple ports and about a +4 db gain per port to overcome feed losses.
This has worked best for me. When I tried higher-powered amps I had to install in-line attenuators to prevent overload which nullified the major benefits of the amplifier in the first place.
Make certain you are getting the best results from your antenna with proper aiming and good quality download cable, like RG-6 instead of RG-59.
An LTE filter could help to eliminate the cell phone signals that get a free ride on the antenna circuit and can cause problems with TV-frequency amplifiers.
Thank you, I will look at a LTE filter first. I like the idea of one piece at a time.
I had limited choices of fixed length coax when I did the installation and wound up with about. 6 - 8 foot of coax looped together. Last night I decided that I would cut the cables to length with a new connection on one end of each cable ( inside & outside). I nave a cable on each side of a 5" flat entry coax connector. Sortening the cables doesn’t look too hard.
I am also going to rearrange my equipment to move the router away from the rest of the equipment.
One step at a time. Finding the best antenna for my situation was the most time consuming part of the process. I am happy with what I have now but I would like to fine tune it.
You were right Tom_C. The ChannelMaster Ch-7777HD Amplify Preamp overdrove the signal on the weak channel and increased the problem. I really wanted to try it but now I am returning it and going with your recommendation. Lte filter plus 4
channel distribution preamp.
I did rearranged my equipment to move the router futher away from the Tablo and I shorten my antenna cable by about 8 feet to about 22 feet. No change.
So it is shopping time again.
With the 4 channel distribution preamp, will conecting the second channel to the TV coax antenna connection cause problems? This would allow the Tablo to be bypassed when I have guests, so they can have simple control of the TV with the remote and channel surf.
That’s what I did for my guest room but I added a flat indoor antenna in that room so they can get all local major networks and I don’t have to use a splitter
So off the 4 port - 3 go to bedroom TV/s and one goes directly into Tablo in the guest room.
I have two AC tall newest Airport Extremes, one in the guest room-cat 5 into Tablo, and one cat 5 in the TV theater living room.
Great routers by the way, stinks they don’t make these any longer…2400 square feet one level ranch home.
Channelmaster 4 port distrribution preamp plus LTE filter. Its been 4 days and it seems better. The preamp seemed to help but I will give it time. I like being able to route one port to the antenna connection on the tv so l can by pass the Tablo to check live tv or to channel surf.
The best improvement has been from the LTE filter. Pixilation has not been eliminated but it has been greatly reduced on the marginal sub channels so that I can record and watch shows that were barely watchable before. Before the LTE filter, I could only watch one out of three Hill Street Blues shows. Now I can watch every shows, some with monor pixilization. 95% of my shows are good and the rest are acceptable.
Pixilation returned for Hero &Icons channel returned. Perfect picture hooked straight to the antenna connector on the TV. Thru the Tablo, distortion seemed be worse during certain times of the day. I tried almost everything, including all 4 of the ports on the preamp. My instructions for the LTE filter said to connect it between the preamp and the antenna wire. It seemed to make little difference with or without the LTE filter before the preamp. The only other thing that I could think of was to move the LTE filter to the antenna as suggested on an other thread. No picture distortion for 3 hours. I will wait and see what happens but for now, I have a perfect picture on H&I channel.
During the week since I moved the LTE Filter to the antenna, I have had only minor pixillation. Installing the LTE Filter af the anntena instead of in front of the preamp has given me the best picture improvement since I installed my system. The 4 port distribution preamp helped but not as much as the LTE Filter. I put termination caps on 2 unused preamp ports, just in case. It is time to try to quit playing with the system and enjoy it.
I am just happy all that I have is minor pixillation. I started looking around at all the possible problems that I have around me. Having a stucco, wire mesh wrapped building between my apartment and the transmission towers. High voltage transmission lines just 150 feet to the south of my apartment. Then today I found a huge cell phone tower just 3/10 mile to the east of me. The tv transmission towers are 47 miles to the south of me. Antenna limitations on antennas by the apartment management. Not to mention being sourronded by 350 apartments, cell phone users and wifi routers.
Thanks for the information that helped me over come the issues to get a picture that I can enjoy.