

#How to use firestick with hdtv antenna install#
Often times it may be necessary to install one of a distribution amplifier or an antenna preamplifier or a combination of both. The advantages of using a splitter is that they are very inexpensive and they will likely allow you to leverage your homes existing cable wiring to run to your various TVs, there are significant drawbacks.ĭue to these drawbacks there are steps you may need to take in order to reduce the losses you are going to experience when using them. Splitting your incoming antenna signal three or more times is really going to impact the quality of the signal that you’re able to receive at your end-point television sets. In terms of the dB losses that will be incurred, there will approximately 7 dB of signal loss on each output port. In this scenario we will see only 25% of the incoming signal on each of the four outputs ports. If we step this up to a four-way splitter, we will see that it is made up of three combined two-way splitters. Of course the insertion losses in the case are additive which is why you now see an insertion loss of -7 dB on top of this.Īs you can see, the more times you split the signal in this fashion the worse things are going to get. In this case, an additional two-way splitter is inserted in-line with one of the outputs ports, meaning the top port will see a 50% reduction in signal from the input (similar to the two-way above) and then the 50% signal of the second port get’s split again so there is only 25% of signal left on the other two output ports. If you increase your number of output ports to three, and insert a three-way splitter, things get a little bit worse as illustrated below. You can see clearly that with a 100% signal on the input, the splitter will “split” the signal 50% on each port and at the same time incur a -3.5 dB insertion loss on each port.

Here’s an image from Channel Master’s website that illustrates how a two-way splitter would look graphically from an output/losses stand-point. On top of this, you can expect to see a 3.5 dB loss on each port due to the insertion loss previously mentioned. The idea is, splitters are designed to split the incoming antenna signal evenly across its output ports, which is typically measure in decibels (dB).


Insertion losses will weaken any signal that you receive distributed beyond the splitter itself. When you place a splitter in between your OTA antenna and your television you are injecting something known as insertion losses. Unfortunately the trade-off when using these devices is signal degradation and losses. And while splitting your antenna signal to feed multiple TVs is the easiest and cheapest way to go, it’s not without its trade-offs. Unfortunately, when things seem to good to be true it usually means that they are. This sounds easy right? Well, the truth is it is extremely to insert these devices and connect multiple TVs to one antenna…but there is a downside…signal loss! Losses to expect when using a splitter
