Home > Consumer Reviews > 4 PORT CABLE TV / HDTV / DIGITAL AMPLIFIER INTERNET MODEM SIGNAL BOOSTER INTERNET AMP

it worked fine for aprox. three weeks. it's not working anymore.
very bad experience with "Cable Amps And Connectors " seller. i am still waiting for seller to replace it. unfortunately I cannot leave him a review anymore.
DON'T BUY from Cable Amps And Connectors unless you want to be stuck with a dead amplifier

Although I have faily decent signal at my house I decided to buy this amplifier. Reason: While the signal was "decent" I had trouble once I hooked up all of the appliances. The Cable company was going to boost the signal but after several attempts I decided it would be worth the investment and not bother with the cable company.

Although I don't have a signal meter, I figured out (from the cable guy) that the cable box had a built in digital meter which display signal strength on your TV! You just have to know to push the right buttons. I have a "Scientific Atlanta - Explorer 4240 HDC" cable box. On this box you will have to hold the "select" button down for 3-4 seconds, release it and then press the info button. You will get a display of your cable signal strength on TV. To exit just press the exit button. So here is what you will see amoung 52 other pages of information!

Tuner | 585 MHz | 2 dBmV | 3 to 4/Sec (avg)
FDC | 74 MHz | -10 dBmV | 114/Sec (avg)
RDC | 23.5 MHz | 51 dBmV | 0 uSec

The above data was when I did NOT connect the amplifier. After I connected the amplifier I got the data below:

Tuner | 585 MHz | 10 dBmV | 30/Sec (avg)
FDC | 74 MHz | -2 dBmV | 0/Sec (avg)
RDC | 23.5 MHz | 56 dBmV | 0 uSec

Between the two it has shown a clear improvement of 8 dBmV for Tuner and FDC (Forward Data Channel), and about 5 dBmV for RDC (Reverse Data Channel). The last column is the error rate (I think). This actually was 30 at first but then dropped to 0/sec, making all of them 0/sec. I am assuming that must be good.

The TV reception on the analog sets seems less grainy than before. The digital is of course the same as expected. However one of the most compelling reasons why this is going to help me, is with the use of my PVR and the TV Guide in the PVR. I have a Philips PVR, which get's into a "bad mood" sometimes - stops recording and hangs. I recently have attributed this to a bad signal strength. Will have to wait and watch to see if this theory is true. However, now I am feeding it a pure source from the amplifier with no splits.

My cable internet seems to be fine, although I am not sure if the speed was improved.

So all in all, I have avoided many splitters with this and am assured of a great signal at all points and at all times. Now if I have issues, I can call the cable company and be assured that this is a major fault at their end, because my end cannot be better.

Last but not the least - the seller had included an additinal set of color printed instructions. That is truly appreciated. In fact their commitment to making sure I have the right instructions is what is making me write this lengthy review. Keep it up.

And one last thing. The 8-port amp, MAY not be a good buy in my opinion because the amplification is only 4db. So I would suggest you stick with the 4-port amp which has an amplification of 7db on paper and 8db on the product! One extra db for the customer.

My digital TV cable signal was weak because too many splitters in my house. Plus I added one more for my HTPC. This amplifier corrects the problem. Now my HDTV and HTPC both get crystal clear pictures. It is made of ceramic and well built, although the size is a little bigger than I thought.

Note that the 4 port version has each port +8db, 2 port version is +11.5 db and 1 port version is +15db. More ports give you more built-in splitters, but doesn't give you more amplification.

I used this for OTA and yes, the performance of this is very respectable. I have 100' coax from the antenna to the house, about 20' more to the distribution panel where the final runs vary in length depending on location. The best solution for me would be a pre-amp at the antenna but since I got a very decent signal already I decided to try this for its simplicity. Using this amp, the S/N coming out of each of the 4 ports is considerably better than going straight to one receiver without the amp.

Here is a tip that I have not seen mentioned: if you do not use all the ports, i.e. not hooking up to a cable, or the cable does not connect to a TV/receiver, terminate the unused ones with a cap (a few bucks a dozen at Radio Shack). It can be done either at the amp or at the other end of the cable. In some cases, unterminated cable can give you a lot of grief.

After the digital transition, I wasn't getting any reception at all with my rabbit ears. I decided to buy a new outdoor antenna, the Antennas Direct DB4, which is an excellent product that I also got from Amazon. Once I got it installed, however, I had about 50 ft of RG6 running from the antenna to the passive 4-way splitter and about 75 to 100 ft running to each of the two HDTVs. In a valley outside of Deliverance, WV, I was getting one channel, 5.1 + 5.2. I expected this and that's all I could get before with analog. But every once and a while one of the TVs would start pixelating and losing audio. I knew it wasn't the TV because both of them had done it. I decided that it must have been the splitter straining too much to get that signal through. To make a long story short, I installed this Amplifier where the splitter was and I not only do I have no problems with that channel, but I also receive signal from 2 additional channels, 10.1 + 10.2 and 12.1 + 12.2. I highly recommend this product.