FWSIV said:
I'm currently finishing off a room upstairs and need to run a cable for satellite. I have a RF sat receiver that is located downstairs with a splitter on the output side. Off the splitter I have 1 cable that goes to the master bedroom on the first floor and 1 cable that goes to the playroom on the second floor. The question is can I install another splitter in the attic on the cable that goes to the playroom and run a cable from there to the new room? Or should I run the new cable back to the receiver?
Thanks-
A "home run" cable back to the receiver will give you a little more flexibility for splitter arrangment, but if you were going to split the playroom cable back at the receiver to feed the new room, it won't make any difference in signal level to put the splitter in the attic.
If the new room is the farthest away, you may want to run the extra cable so you can feed it from the first splitter, and feed the other two from the second, which will give the longer cable an extra 3.5 dBmV (-3.5 dBmV after each 2-way split).
If they're equal length cables, you could run the new cable to the receiver, and use a "balanced" 3-way splitter with about 5.5 dBmV signal loss on each leg - keeping them all equal in level.
Either way you should be fine for signal. Cable loss for Channel 3 (or 4) is not too bad - I've fed four rooms from one receiver and didn't have a problem (until my wife got tired of watching what I was watching and we got a second receiver)
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