Snowy Cable TV Reception? Here's a Cable Booster I Recommend and some Tips

Since no one house is built perfect, I've had my fair share of a seemingly never ending episode of home repairs. My recent problem was dealing with my snowy channel reception.


The problem started when the cable contractor of my place screwed up the cable installation. From the port outside, the signal cannot go in because the cable was damaged somewhere in between. The worst part of the problem is, they cannot extract and change the wire because the pipe they used was of low quality that, you cannot pull the existing cables anymore.

Tip number 1. Use a durable pipe to protect your wiring. Either for telephone, cable or RJ45. This way, you can still pull out the installed cable if necessary.

Tip number 2. While your house is still under construction, future-proof it by installing 2 telephone lines (or more), 1 RJ45 (or more if necessary) and 2 cable lines. Yes, it might not be necessary but the next time I'm having my place built again, I will check out my notes here and do it.

So, no cable signal can enter my place unless I have it repaired. Since my place is under warranty, what the contractor did was to rewire it by setting up a new (exposed) cable line up to the 3rd floor, through the balcony and drill a hole into the room up there. The initial plan was to use the existing cable in that room so that we can split it to provide cable in that room and the other line to go to the ground level. (Check out my simple diagram below)

It solved the problem a bit. Cable now reached ground level but the quality is very very poor. It was almost 90% snowy. Even the local free channels was snowy! To solve this, I bought a cable booster online because that's what everyone recommended.

Here's what I bought (By the way, not recommended!)

Onron  6 port CATV Signal Amplifier | Php 1,200.00

JMA 2 port Signal Amplifier | Php 300.00

I had to buy one 2 port and one 6 port cable booster. I used the 2 port in the 3rd floor room so that the TV there can have cable and the other line to go to the ground level. The 6 port in the ground level is to split it to the rest of the house. I tried to attach it and it did help a teeny-weeny bit. From the 3rd floor to the ground level, the signal improved compared to when we weren't using cable booster. The problem is, from the ground floor redistributing it to the rooms on the 2nd and 3rd, the reception is still very snowy to the point that the TV can't even detect the channels the cable service provides!

So, I bought another set of Cable signal amplifier in Wilcon.

Newstar 4 port CATV Signal Amplifier | Php 1,200.00+

Newstar 2 port CATV Signal Amplifier | Php 1,065.00+/-

After changing it to this new set of signal amplifiers, we tested the signal again and wow! The reception improved drastically! Using the Onron/JMA boosters, the TV in my room only detected 12 channels while using Newstar 2 port/Newstar 4 port bossters, my TV detected 43 channels! That's almost 4 times more channels!

Tip Number 3. You get what you pay for. I don't recommend Onron and JMA signal boosters. Newstar is better but I have yet to find a much better one. Will update this post if I find one.

So we have concluded that the cables inside the house is working but the problem is, the distance traveled and the number of splits is just too much. Tomorrow, I will have them re-install a new set of cable wiring straight to the ground level rather than traveling to the 3rd level and splitting it to the ground level before splitting it again to the rooms. I'm thinking that this one will work now.

Cheftonio
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