Skip to main content

Whole house antenna


 As a recent cord cutter living in close proximity to a metropolitan area, I enjoy over 40 HD channels for free.  Ok, well maybe I only enjoy about 8 of those channels and the others are not so good.   What I really use this for is local channel news and channel flipping. 

In any case, to be efficient, I wanted to only have 1 antenna power a TV signal to any coaxial jack in the house - so I searched the web looking for a good example of how to do this.  Unfortunately, google didn't show me what I was looking for, so I experimented on my own & I'm happy with the result.  

The challenge - how to use 1 antenna to feed an HD TV signal to all of the TV coaxial jacks in the house (except 1 that I hijack).

Here are some of the prerequisites for this project if you approach it my way.
  1. Have good coaxial cable throughout the house
  2. Have a centralized closet where the coaxial cables in the house all converge.
  3. Have an HD Antenna with the range you need for your location
  4. Have an amplified splitter with enough jacks to meet your connection needs. (you will need a power source to power the amplifier part)
  5. Your TV must have an HD Tuner.  Some older TVs don't and some new Vizio TVs don't.

Here is an illustration of what I went for.

Here are the steps I took to get this taken care of.  
  1. Get a good HD antenna hooked up in the attic and hijack a coaxial cable (that isn't being used) to feed the signal back to the wiring closet where all the coaxial cables converge.
  2. Get and amplified splitter and connect the hijacked coaxial cable to the 'input' jack , while connecting other house cables to the 'output' jacks - these would be the cables that lead to jacks where you have a TV you want to connect.
  3. Connect the corresponding jack to the TV input on your TV and run the the auto programming channel finder.  This should result in finding all the channels your location/antenna can provide to every jack in the house. 
Done - all TVs get the same channels.  

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to install smart switches

I replaced some old dumb light switches with new smart light switches.  Note 1 :Before I go through the steps, here is a little bit of important information to know.  There may be several wires required to make the new switch connect - here is the definition of what you should see available in the housing for the switch. Smart light Switch = In my case, this is a wall light switch that has a radio that can be connected ted to a Hub for remote control or for programming on/off/dimmer based upon triggers. The protocol of the radio is z-wave in my case. Line = always hot wire - this is the source of current to the switch. Load =wire that goes to light out the other side of the switch and is only hot when the switch is turned on. Neutral =  White wire (in my house) that carries a current back to the source for the unbalanced portion of the load Ground wire = the wire that grounds the circuit. Note 2: I've only installed z-wave switches with a neutral ...
1 comment
Read more

The hot toddy

  2 tbsp of lemon juice (fresh squeezed  if possible) 2 tbsp oz of honey 4 tbsp of whiskey stir well add slice of lime or lemon or orange with cloves sprinkle cinnamon let is sit while you boil water add boiling water to fill cup
Post a Comment
Read more

NY strip steak on a Traeger

I find it hard to make steak the way I like it on my Traeger.  My preference is called 'Pittsburg' style which is sort of similar to 'black & blue' in that it requires a high temperature to sear the meat on the outside (carbonize it without overcooking the inside which I like rare).  Here are the steps I take to make it the way I like it.  Note step #5 is sort of cheating, but it works for me. Put the Traeger on smoke setting.  After smoke starts,put the steaks on the grill for 20-30 minutes. Get the steak off the grill and crank the temp up as high as it goes. Season the steak with Light oil, salt, pepper, garlic (while waiting for the grill to get up to temperature) Steaks back on the grill & cook at least at 400 degrees for 4 minutes each side Sear on iron skillet on a gas stove for a few seconds until it looks like you want it. Finally, if you want to get unhealthy, you can add clarified butter and put that on the steak wh...
Post a Comment
Read more