Drop amplifiers

[flavius]

I'd like to boost the signal for my NVidia tuner a little bit. Are those drop amplifiers any good? Here is one those I'm looking at ..

http://www.broadbandamps.com/dropamps.htm

I have multiple splits (Cable Modem & Cable TV and Cable Box & Standard Cable). The signal that I'm getting from the cable box is fine.

Any recommendations?

[flavius]

bump

[stefano540]

Hi there, although I am not familiar with these units, they look like they would fit the bill. I use Electroline drop amps/splitters that I bought someplace on Ebay and I recall paying a lot less than these prices.
Stefano

[stanger89]

I don't know anything about those specifically, but just make sure you put any amp before as many splitters as possible. If you put them right in front of your TV card you're not going to do any good since you're just amplifying an already bad signal.

By putting it before the splitters you can help prevent some of the "loss" caused by running through the splitters.

[SPHurley]

You show you have cable, the amps you picked have no gain on the return path and do have loss. Cable systems "talk" to your box on the return path and depending on the system you may affect it. If you are using it for your internet you may affect it as well.
Look for companies such as Winegard, Channel Master, Blonder Tongue, Macom. They all make two-way amps.

[ToxMox]

The amps the OP linked to are all bi-directional. I'm not sure if there are amps out there that have a gain on the return path.

[SHS]

Read though this http://www.cabletvamplifiers.com/Inf..._EDUCATION.htm
The best drop amp are PDI, Motorola, Viewsonics and Electroline.

Look for companies such as Winegard, Channel Master, Blonder Tongue, Macom. They all make two-way amps.

There amps are more Antenna TV then Cable TV the key thing is it need to support 1GHz support cable signal

[SPHurley]

The first cable system in the US was Santa Barbara, we used tube amps back in the 60's, the first two way system in the US was the GM plant in Fremont CA. I worked on them both. Yes Pico Macom makes two way, consumer amps. Look at the CDA-* series, you can get them with and without rev gain. Look the amp specs, amp should give you gain, noise, Max output, frequency, number of channels. Use a CATV amp for cable not an over-the-air amp. OTA amps are not designed to handle the number of channels and will overload and cause more problems than they will cure. Many amp will have a slope control, if your cable runs are long you can use the control to give more gain to the higher frequencies and less to the lower to compensate for the slope in the cable loss. Don't cascade amps, use the right amp in the first place. Don't expect the amp to 'clean up' a dirty signal, it will only add some noise if its own and boost the level up.
Thats my two cents from 40+ years of doing it.