Daisy Chain Cable Amp

[Snigle]

Hello,

I purchased a Ceton InfiniTV 4 at launch and it has been great.

I just moved into a new house an the signal is awful.

TimeWarner cable put in this amp: http://www.amazon.com/Bi-Directional-Am ... 20&sr=1-10

and my main drop was boosted to -13dBmV, I was having a lot of issues with my tuner.

At my previous place I had purchased this amp: http://www.amazon.com/PCT-4-Port-Signal ... 18&sr=8-16

So this is what I did-
I daisy chained the 1-Port Bi-Directional Amp into the PCT 4-Port RF Signal Amp. This boosted my signal to a much more respectable +2dBmV and everything seems to be working great.

I was wondering if this is:
1) safe to do?
2) and if I will see any negative consequences to daisy chaining amps?

At this point TimeWarner is unwilling to upgrade the single amp they installed to a more powerful model and are (obviously) unsupportive of me using my own amp.

What is everyone's thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

[Beradon]

I'm actually interested in this as well, as my house has a similar issue.

TWC put in a motorola amp:
http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-Booster- ... 101&sr=8-1

In front of an 8-way cable splitter which almost negated any of the amplification that the amp supplied (the 8-way splitter has -11db drop on all connections).

I originally removed the 8-way splitter because I was basically only using 1 coax port in the house and without the splitter I had reasonable signal strength since I had to use my own splitters near the InfiniTV4 (Tuning adapter, ClearQAM tuners, etc) The reason this is an issue is because I'm about to get some MOCA adapters so I can connect my XBox 360 as an extender in another part of the house, thus requiring me to put in at least one more splitter (where the 8-way is coming into my house, I wont be using the 8-way), but the addition of that one more splitter will cause additional signal loss that will put me just outside of the -7dbmv that has been mentioned is ideal.

So my question is similar to above. Will I lose anything important by adding an additional amp?

[Scallica]

In my opinion, a weak signal coming into the house on the main drop is unacceptable. I would call Time Warner and request that they replace the cable from the pole to your house. There is always the possibility that the wire was chewed by animals or has some other type of damage caused by the weather.

Second, I don't think there is any harm in using more than one amplifier, but I think it's a better idea to amplify a good signal rather than amplify a poor signal.

[makryger]

Completely agree with Scallica. You are paying for this service. You're not paying for a poor quality signal coming into your house. They should come out and get it to a respectable level before the signal gets to your home not when it gets to your home. You may be able to get the signal power to a decent level, but you're not going to help the signal-to-noise ratio at all.

[barnabas1969]

I agree also. Basically, what you are saying is that they installed a +14dB amp, and this brought your signal up to -13dB. That means that the signal coming into your house (before their amp) is -27dB. This is completely unacceptable. The cable company needs to fix the problem.

[erkotz]

Agreed with the others - if installing a +14dB amp brought your signal up to only -13dBmV (with no splitters) this is unacceptable. Make TWC fix it the right way.
There is nothing specifically wrong with using two amps, but each amp adds more noise to the signal (lowering your SNR) so you might run into trouble there.
Also 2 amps may negatively impact the return path to the point your TA and Cable Modem have issues. One larger amp (possibly with a return path) is likely a better choice.

[Snigle]

Thanks everyone, I'll give TWC another call.

Last time they were here they did mentioned that I was "very far from the neighborhood drop" and they were "surprised everything worked". I had no idea that the amp wouldn't help the SNR (granted I haven't looked at that yet), so I really do appreciate the feedback.