Splitting coax cable line

[RatLabGuy]

for the tech/comm guys...

Now that all coax cable communication in/out of the house has gone digital, what is the best approach for splitting cable lines in the house to feed several rooms/devices?

I need to add a few jacks to my house, mostly for places where TVs could go, although i can't imagine we'd add more than 2... mostly justpreparing for options later.

From a layout/wiring standpoint, a handful of splitters would be easiest, but that means some connections could be behind 3 splits.
or better to have 1 huge 8-way block splitter & amplifier, even though this means a lot more wiring?
I know there will be amplitude loss w/ each split, but does it really matter w/ the digital protocols?

 

[shawn]

It still matters. You can jump it up with one big amp at the service entrance, then split it down the line however is cheapest/most convenient. Or you can use a few smaller splitter/amps along the way, etc.

A passive splitter will say on it what the db loss is for each leg. There's usually one leg that's low loss, then the others are all higher. You could use the low loss leg to run down the house to the bedrooms, then split it again and send one short run to each room.

And buy high quality cable (RG6), good compression-style connectors, and a real crimp tool.

Although, if you're not adding the other devices now, no need to add the amp just yet. Our tvs have a signal strength meter built in, so you can easily check to see how good/bad the signal is later on and buy an amp if necessary.

Just for reference, our TV stuff is all OTA. We have two antennas in the attic, one pointed at Clayton, one pointed at CH. The CH antenna has a 25db amp on it, then both antennas run backwards through a splitter. A single line runs down into the house, where a four port splitter amp (+7db) divvies up the outputs. The splitter amp is just big enough to offset its own loss.

 

[mommucked]

Be very careful/check when cutting/stripping the insulation if you use a razor knife to prep the cable, so you don't nick or scratch/scrape the copper, that can cause problems w reception. If you do just cut it off and try again.

 

[kaiser715]

I like doing home runs -- take everything back to a central splitter. That way, when technology changes/advances, you have a better chance of it still working for you. When I built my house, I put 2x jacks in each room, each one having a home run of coax, 2x CAT5, 1x POTS. (I also stubbed conduit down from each box, so can easily add/changeout wiring in the future.