AKICOLJ: Cable TV

[gerisullivan]

I have cable TV. The former owner had cable connections in several rooms, but when my cable was hooked up, the installer checked, then said the previous generation(s) of cable weren't good and he installed one new cable. Shortly after that, I tried one of the upstairs connections just to see if it worked; it didn't.

My living room arrangement is no longer working. One of the possible rearrangements involves moving the TV 20 feet away, across the room lengthwise from the 6-8 feet of cable it is currently connected to.

Is there a solution for this that a cable neophyte can handle? Preferably one that doesn't involve calling the cable company and paying them to put in another connection?

I tried Google -- from what I can make out of the technical pages my search turned up, I should be able to do something with a splitter. I don't really want to split the signal, though; I just want the cable to be long enough to reach across the room. That's likely to end up being more like 35 feet -- I'd run it along the baseboards and not straight across the room itself.

Fingers crossed there's an easy answer to this!

(Yes, I've been watching too much HGTV. Not that there's anyplace else in my house to put everything if I were to empty out the room for starters as their shows so often do. Lovely though it would be to paint if I did....)

Comments

[johno.livejournal.com]

Radio Shack.

Ask for a barrel connector and 25' of coax.

You may loose some signal, but not as much as with a splitter.

For just 20-25'you shouldn't need a amplifier.

Unless you are feed 3 VCRs, a TIVO and a TV.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

One cable box, hooked to one TV that's currently hooked to one DVD player. There's a VCR that needs to be added into the stack; the old one died.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

If you want to tape from the cable, you'll need a splitter to go between the cable box and the TV and VCR (and then hook the VCR output to the TV input).

I have my splitter between the input cable and the two VCRs and then the VCRs and the DVD player are hooked up directly to the TV. This lets me see what's on TV without switching from one of the VCRs back to the TV, which is useful when I'm taping two programs and watching a third all at the same time.

[jolest.livejournal.com]

She doesn't need a splitter from the description she gave.

Wall-jack -> cable-box -> VCR -> TV

The VCR or the TV may already have multiple input options (most VCRs have at least RF and RCA (line) options). Use the RF input for the cable-box signal and use the RCA-in (line-in) connectors for the DVD player. This would require the VCR be "on" to watch a DVD, but removes some extra hardware and also allows taping non copy-protected DVD material on the VCR...

As an alternative, if the TV has multiple inputs, she could hook the DVD straight into the TV. This would allow recording a cable show while simultaneously watching a DVD (an option not available with the first configuration I mentioned). But this wouldn't allow for recording non copy-protected DVD material...

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

You're right, I didn't think of that.