RF combiner

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post #1 of 4

1/22/09 at 4:27pm

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12 Posts. Joined 9/2006
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Hopefully I can explain my situation. I have a Samsung HDTV now, it is a non wide screen TV that has a HD tuner, and many inputs. What it also has is 2 RF inputs, one for Antenna the other for Cable.

I have a DTV receiver in another room on a modulator, Channel 3, hooked in to the RF cabling of the house, the only device. On channel 3, in the kitchen or my office I can use the receivers RF remote to watch the Sat programming. Very handy.

In the family room it is hooked into the Cable RF of the Samsung. For those times when the DVR is tied up record two shows and I want to watch a ball game. Or something record on the other DVR.

My indoor HDTV antenna is on the other RF ANT input.

I am getting a new TV that only has one RF input. It has a HD Tuner.

I am getting a OUT Door antenna. I would like to combine the OTA signal with the RF modulated signal on channel 3 and feed it to the Kitchen, office and the new TV in family room.

I figured I could get a splitter/combiner to see if it worked. It worked in principle as I was able to watch channel 3 and the OTA signal. But Channel three was very fuzzy.

I am using a splitter that has 5-900mhz on it. Reversed of course as a "combiner" I have no idea what this means. I know this is possible to do what I am trying to do I just don't know what to get.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

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post #2 of 4

1/22/09 at 4:52pm

2,110 Posts. Joined 5/2007
Location: Taylorsville, UT
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Do you have a local channel 2 or 4? You might need an SC-3.

post #3 of 4

1/23/09 at 8:35am

139 Posts. Joined 10/2004
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OK, so if I read this right...you are currently modulating the DTV reciever onto its own wiring system and it is working fine. You now want to combine that modulated signal (ch3) and the OTA antenna feed onto the same wiring?

I would suggest a couple things.

First it appears that you don't have a channel 3 on the OTA that you are concerned about, since obviously these two signal cannot both be seen. As egnlsn asks, are there signals you want on channels 2 or 4? Generally a modulator set up for home use will not be precise enough to broadcast on only one channel, so it will bleed over onto the neighboring channels.

If this is all ok, then you will need a filter to clean up any signal that comes in on the OTA feed for channel 3. You may not have a useable channel there, but generally you will get "noise" on that channel from the OTA antenna that will interfere with your modulated signal. What you need is called a "notch filter" that will block any signal coming from the OTA antenna for that frequency. The device that egnlsn linked to appears to be a combination of a notch filter and a splitter/combiner.

Another note, you may want to think about replacing your current splitter/combiner. Today generally the better quality ones have at least 5-1000mHz.

post #4 of 4

1/23/09 at 10:39am

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