Hi all,I have cheap RG-59 cable running through the house. (I'd say maybe 200ft total) It is also split 4 ways with a 120db isolation 5-1000mhz splitter. The TV's and cable modem at the end of the cable have a lot of shadowing and other noise. The cable modem also occasionally will lose it's connection.If I were to install a single port electroline 15db amplifier, would it resolve some of these issues? I have read RG-59 cable is cheap and there are better cables, but I'd prefer not to re-wire the whole house if possible...Thanks for any info!

The first question is: When you say "cheap RG 59, do you mean copper-braid cable, or is it just inexpensive foil+braid RG 59? If it is either, it needs to be replaced. Copper-braid cable is, at best, only 95% shielded, which means 5% or more unshielded. But that's the expensive copper-braid cable. The most common is 65-85% braid, which is 15-35% unshielded (holes). All of those holes get found by broadcast TV and radio signals. On the VHF locals, you get ghosting, upper teens through lower 20s, you get crosshatch and other noise in the pictures. Channels 95-97 have loads of garbage (FM radio), and if there are broadcast UHF channels, cable channels ~65 and up will have problems. If the cable has foil, but it is not bonded, there is the potential for the same problems, but to a lesser degree. An amplifier will not help the situation.If the cable has foil that is bonded to the dielectric, it is probably alright. Make sure that the connectors are real connectors and not the...

RG-59 & Amplifier?

Mar 09, 2005 23 Replies

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James Knott 21 years ago

Quite so. Typo on my part.

Most people are not aware, that there used to be a channel 1 in North America, but it was reallocated, due to interference problems. The 50-54 MHz spectrum is now the 6 M amateur radio band.

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Ed Nielsen 21 years ago

Yes, a rather interesting history behind Channel 1. For a bit more detail, go to and download "Whatever happened to Channel ?" Some other good downloads there, as well. Some pretty good stuff on the "Links" page, also.

CIAO!

James Knott wrote:

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Tomi Holger Engdahl 21 years ago

It is true that using 5-65 MHz as return channel will block several lowers channels on the cable. And indeed here it does that. But that's not too much of a problem, because those are generally to much used and there are lots of channels on the higher frequencies.

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Lucas Tam 21 years ago

Ed Nielsen wrote in news:XN6dnYoUcqJnkqzfRVn- snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:

Yup, I believe Electroline sells 2 version of this amp, but I haven't seen the 5-65mhz model before... I believe most that are on eBay are the 5-42 MHz version.

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