Will one antenna serve up 4 OTA tuners?

Help with tuners from ATI, Hauppauge, AverMedia and more.
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lrish

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Will one antenna serve up 4 OTA tuners?

#1

Post by lrish » Tue Oct 14, 2014 6:16 pm

I want to have the ability to record more than two channels at once using one antenna. Can I use a HDHomerun (with antenna connected) and a PCI card (with no antenna connected) or do I need a seperate antenna hooked to both devices? I know WMC pools the tuners but didn't know if this type of configuration would work without having a signal (antenna) coming through. It would be a lot easier if silicondust made it with 4 or 6 tuners like Ceton. My ceton only works with cablecard and comcast can't give me one that works longer than 3 weeks without needing to exchange/reactivate it.

3rob3

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#2

Post by 3rob3 » Wed Oct 15, 2014 12:34 am

Put a splitter before the tuners and connect the output to each tuners's input.

erkotz

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#3

Post by erkotz » Wed Oct 15, 2014 8:15 pm

You may want an amplifier if you are splitting it. Note that antennas amps generally differ from cable TV ones.
Quality Assurance Manager, Ceton Corporation

epayson85

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#4

Post by epayson85 » Fri Oct 17, 2014 6:31 am

I just helped my dad with this last year. There is an art / method to getting the best signal from your antenna. The problem with digital signals now is if you get a bad signal the whole picture goes out instead of a little snow. If you use an amp then all you do is amplify the bad signal. Each channel is going to be different as they are coming from different directions and different distances. My father happened to have a good location close to most of the stations but it isn't always a good thing to be close. The signals were so close that they get too strong and the amp makes it worse. The beauty of the HD homeruns are their signal strength reading for each channel. We were able to figure out what was going on. We almost had to buy an attenuator but by actually using a mediocre splitter it cut down the signal enough. If you do need an amp I would recommend the Channel masters. They have different ones depending on your location / amp needs. The beauty of them is they have FM traps. If you use a cable amp it amplifies everything including FM signals. This can cause serious issues with your signal. Your best bet is to mess around until you find what works. There are some great websites out there that will tell you what kind of signals you can get at your house and what antenna you need to pick them up. My father has two HD homeruns and loves his setup. He uses timewarners $15 a month internet and pays for nothing else. Good luck on your setup!

lrish

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#5

Post by lrish » Sun Oct 19, 2014 5:39 am

Thanks for the help, but this is getting returned asap. I installed my leaf antenna directly to the tv - perfect picture, no issues at all. I installed it to the HDHomerun and walked through the required setups including WMC. Every HD channel has such a terrible pixelation/skips in the stream that the station is not watchable. Silicondust "is aware of the problem and is working on it" according to the FAQ on their website. Also this new version will show up on bluray players and the ps3.....it lists each channel but gives an error message when you click on it. So this basically does not work as advertised. I know its not my network because I have a brand new router capable of handling the stream (Buffalo AirStation WZR-1750DHP).

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