Help! My condo is daisy chained!

[uconn99]

Unfortunately my first post on this board is about a issue I am having with my Cox cable HD service and hopefully someone can help me out. It is more an issue I believe with the way the condo was wired than with Cox cable. Here is a overview on how things are setup, sorry about the long nature of this post.

I am a renter and live in a nice condo in Phoenix, Arizona. However, who ever bought the condo either cut costs by having their cable daisy chained or that's how the builder decided to do it!

Currently in the condo there are 3 cable jacks, one is in the Master bedroom, another in bed 2, and finally one in the family room.

Cable feed comes in from the street to a Phone/Cable closet on the bottom floor which houses all the cable and phone for the building I am in, only community staff and cable/phone providers have access to this room.

From this closet/room, there is a cable feed running up to my condo unit directly to the Master bedroom outlet. After unscrewing the plate I noticed that this line coming from the downstairs utility room is being split using a standard non-amplified 5-1,000mhz 3.5 GHZ db splitter into the master bedroom plate and then running into bed 2.

From bed 2 it repeats itself, using the same splitter and then running it into the family room where it directly connects to the cable plate. In the end the family room is the last line of the daisy chain, you think they would have done it reversed!


The issues I am having is that the TV signal on my Samsung 56'' 1080p display in the family room looks bad during most HD programs. I am seeing a lot of digital noise, lots of image bleeding and simply not the picture quality I should be seeing.

I am using the Cox HD scientific Atlantis HD8240 box with a monster 800 series 1 meter HDMI cable running to the Samsung.

I know there is really no way of getting around the daisy chain setup the builder has done, and there is also no way of me doing a direct feed from the first spit that's located in the master bedroom and running that into the family room because I am on floor 2 of 3.

Is there a good way I can boost that signal into the family room from the incoming line in the master bedroom? Some kind of good amplifier anyone recommends? Or am I out of look with the way the condo was wired?



Thanks for the help on this issue everyone!

 

[stevenl]

Well first id contact cox to come out and see if they can configure anything outside to give you a little more signal, usally apartments/condos are ran hot at the tap to allow for such "cascading splitters" So make sure they are setup right and all the connectors are good, have them check inside make sure the splitters are fine and the likes. LAST RESORT see if they can install a 1 port amp before the master bedroom line so it will feed from the strongest point to the 3rd bedroom, (itll look a little clutterd but you should be able to hide it behind a dressor or somtin)

 

[dishrich]

If you really want to do this the correct way, all of those splitters should be changed to single output tap-offs. While a tap-off looks like a splitter, it works completely different. It takes a high level signal from a source coax feed, "taps off" a small amount of signal enough for that single outlet, then sends the rest of it on down to the next set, then so on & so on...
They also make them in different tap-down values, as you will need a different value at each location, since the bulk signal on the trunk will be going down some with each tap put in the line.
You might still need a single out amp to do the job as well, but again, it depends on the amount of signal coming up to your unit.

This is what one is:
http://www.picomacom.com/specs/pico/C/C15-C16.pdf

As steven points out, you should probably call Cox to come out & do all this for you, since you are paying them for service. You might have to get some sort of "advanced tech" to work on this, since some techs don't understand how taps work. (they are only used to working with splitters)

Many buildings utilize this type of distribution system (tap-offs), since it does NOT require a separate run of coax for EACH TV outlet - you see this in such places as hotel/motels, hospitals, some apartments, etc. (particularly if the apartment complex provides some sort of free basic cable with the rent) In some other instances, each unit has a home run back to a closet, but then has all the outlets WITHIN that unit series looped w/taps. This way the cable co. can cut off service to an individual unit by disconnecting only 1 wire, as well requiring fewer direct coax runs back to the same distribution point. It sounds like you place is like this - I'm wondering if somebody that had the unit before you, might have tampered with the wall plates & maybe changed tap-offs to splitters, not knowing any better?

Good luck.

 

[stevenl]

The problem with a "dc looped system" or a tap feed as you call it is the DC (Directional Coupler or Tap feed as you call it) is that in a 2 way splitter you lose about 3db on each leg. On a DC instead of losing signal equal (splitting the signal 50% which = 3.5db some math genious came up with this) what it does is allows the signal to pass to the "through" leg with minimum loss maybe about 1db or so insertion loss. and on the TAP leg it will usally use a defined value like 6 / 9 / 12 depending on the DC you use. So your outlet #1 instead of have a 3db loss from a two way now gains a 6DB loss and your second tv instead of a 6db loss has a 7 db loss (6 + 1 = 7) and then on your third tv instead of a 9db loss you will have a 8 db loss (6 + 1 + 1) so technicly you gain 1 DB at the last tv but sacrifice the other 2 tvs, with outlet one loseing 3db more and outlet two loseing 1db more, so you gain 1db at tv 3 but lose 4 db from the other tvs... Unless your going 5+ tvs deep in cascade then this method is not recomended.. In the old days, when houses were "loop fed" there were special wall plates you kinda just pushed the cables together however this didnt make a great connection and allowed for alot of ingress and egress.

and unless you know the signal at the first splitter then its hard to tell which method is best to use, as you need to know what your working with before you can design the inside.