How to get TiVo signal to basement theater?  

Hi all,

I am currently putting together a home theater in the basement. I have a TiVo upstairs, which I use a modulator (the cheapest I could find - http://www.smarthome.com/7715a.html ) to put its signal on channel 91. Currently, its signal upstairs (which has to travel through a whole bunch of splitters) is definitely noisy.

My question is - if I have a more direct run to my theater (sending the coax through only maybe 1 or 2 splitters), how good will the signal be? Given that this is going to go on a big screen (through an HTPC and dTV), I want to avoid signal degredation (on an already imperfect signal) as much as possible. I *could* run an S-video cable directly (I guess I'd convert the S-video into 2 composite cables because it's maybe a 50-100 ft run), but that would be a pain.

Will there be much degradation with a modulator compared to S-video cable? And does the modulator itself make a big difference?

Thanks in advance!

Mike

Thanks for the replies!

My understanding is that the whole house video distribution panels require direct coax home-runs to all the outlets. That would clearly eliminate splitters and a lot of problems! I *guess* I could rewire things... How is IR handled? Is it integrated with the 8200, or do you need a separate item?

For IR distribution, I currently own an Xtra Link 2 (http://www.smarthome.com/8197.html), which does low voltage signaling over the coax. But that also has trouble jumping splitters. Is it possible to get an amplifier that will work with the low voltage signal too?

I'm not sure if I'm ready to jump in with both feet yet... Is there any issue if you couple 2 long coax cables together, say 50' + 30'? Is that much worse than a single 80' coax? If I could extend my coax cables, maybe I could get all the cables into 1 room in the basement...

Mike

I just wanted to let everyone know I found a very informative article about running coax over Cat5:
http://www.belden.com/products/tpvutp85.htm

Mike