If you can flag down a cable guy and convince him to give you some free splitters, then good for you. If you can't, then be prepared to spend some money.
Those cheap looking splitters they sell at Radio Shack are NO GOOD. Do NOT use combiner/splitters. Combiners trash digital signal and make it almost impossible for cable modems and digital boxes to talk back to your provider.
You want at least a 1GHz splitter. 900MHz usually work as well (unless your cable company actually goes above a gig, which I seriously doubt).
The 1GHz means that the splitter is designed to pass signals all the way up to 1GHz. You can use a splitter that says signals up to 2.5GHz instead of 1ghz however you wont need that expanded bandwidth for cable signals.
You may also have the option of buying power passing or not. You most likely do not need a power passing splitter. These are generally for special purpose applications (such as powering a signal amplifier that's in your attic from the outlet in your bedroom without running a power cord to it).
Also, do not get a bigger splitter than you NEED. The more ports a splitter has, the less signal it passes along to each port. Plus, they are more expensive.
Splitters are NOT made to connect wires together. I've been to many houses where people used an old crappy splitter they had laying around to hook up 2 or more short wires to each other because they didn't want to go out and buy a longer wire. SPLITTERS LOSE SIGNAL.
Good brands that I personally have dealt with are Monster (expensive), Regal, and Cablevision. I'm not incredibly fond of Magnavox splitters (usually found at K-Mart).
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by Raydr  edited by Axilla
last modified: 2007-09-20 18:13:49 |
