I'm going to pick up a second hdhomerun for all the fall season recordings I'll need to be doing... But that's going to add another two drops on my line. I'm thinking that I'll have the two hdhomeruns (4x hookups), cable box (1x hookup), and analog dual tuner (1x hookup, internal splitter) hooked up in my basement theater. However, that seems to be splitting quite a lot. That's 6 hookups (7 if you count the dual tuner, even though it's on one coax line), and a 6 way F-type splitter looks like each connection has 16dB of attenuation. What kind of amplifier should I get for all that?

A 6-way splitter does not lose 16dB. An 8-way only loses 12. Get an 8-output drop amp.

Try that 8-way without amplification first. You may not need it and too much signal will cause as many problems as too little. If you do need an amp, Antronix makes good stuff.

Something else I thought of, the line leading to my 6 drops that I was talking about comes off of a 3 or 4 way splitter (I'll have to check). Would it be good to have an amp before that as well?

Maybe I should just get the cable company out to check on this. I just now read that you can check the signal / symbol quality with the hdhomerun, so I'll give that a go tonight. Something is causing a few channels to not come in perfect...

Something else I thought of, the line leading to my 6 drops that I was talking about comes off of a 3 or 4 way splitter (I'll have to check). Would it be good to have an amp before that as well?

That many splits on cable should have an amp of some kind. Ideally, the amp would be placed before any splits to ensure that you're not amplifying any noise in the signal.

The best setup would be to rewire, and just run all connections directly off an 8-way splitter/amp (using a single splitter, you may not need the amp - it depends on your signal). If you have to keep the current splitter setup, then I would advise some type of amp early in the signal.

Also, be sure to check your cables and connections. A bad crimp can cause a lot of loss and noise in the line, and could account for the problems you're seeing.

I'll probably have to keep the 3 or 4 way splitter where it is, as it's on the other side of the basement and supplies the rest of the house. I run one cable from that over to my htpc area and currently have a 4 way splitter there. So I should just get an 8 way amp and put it at the end of the cable going to the htpc area?

The HDHomeruns can be placed anywhere, so my advice would be to relocate them to the same area of the first splitter. Then an 8-way amp can be installed at that location and feed everything with a clean signal (you'll need a splitter after the amp, since you'll have about 10 drops total, but that shouldn't be an issue).

If you have to keep the wiring the way it is, make sure you have a good, clean signal at the outlet where you install the amp, or you'll just end up amplifying noise.