Hi experts,

I have very simple TV needs. There are a few TVs around my townhome, and because I live pretty near Seattle I use rabbit-ears to receive OTA analog signals. My condo is wired with cable with wall plate connectors in nearly every room. While most folks here are Comcast customers I'm happy with the local channels via the rabbit-ears. I don't subscribe.

I'd like to install a better indoor antenna at the highest point in my place (maybe the attic). Can I "tap into" the existing coax cable network with an antenna and feed my separate TVs off of that in each room? What kind of connector(s) would I use?

Thanks for your views.

Sure you could....Just use standard Coax splitters/combiners to tap into one of the legs as long as all the other feeds are connected somewhere.

Indeed you can feed your coax network with a signal from your OTA antenna but I believe you need to consider where to tap into the network. A coax network is a tree-and-branch type of network which is highly directional; it is designed to enable the signal to flow from the root of the tree to the branches (ie. from the cable company to each of your rooms) and vice versa. The coax network is also specifically designed to prevent signal flow from branch to branch (ie room to room). Each splitter in your house has isolation circuitry between its outputs and probably attenuates the signal around 20dB (as opposed to approx 3.5dB loss from input to output). Hence going through the network in the proper direction is important to signal quality (especially for your passive OTA antenna)

Find the coax input to your condo (probably your cable break-out box on the side of your building) and connect your antenna there. If you cannot gain access then you should follow that cable to the first splitter in your condo and replace the input cable with the one from your antenna. This will distribute the signal with the highest quality to all of your rooms.