TheGreenButton - Windows Media Center Forums

I have some random questions regarding coax signal loss as I plan on doing some re-wiring in the house soon. If I had my choice, I'd rip the drywall out and do it right.... but the wife won't allow that. So, I'll be doing some "creative" patching... so bear with the randomness.

Regarding female to female coax connectors: How much, if any, signal will i lose when using one of these?

I have also read that there is some loss when using a Switched Digital Tuning Adpater. How much loss is expected? Is the coax out port on a TA simply a "pass-thru" device?

I have some old school coax run in my house. (house is about 30 yrs old) The kind that is two coax lines in one... only one line is used. I've examined this wiring, however there is no marking on it to designate if it is RG59 or RG6. It seems pretty pliable... not stiff like some of the newer RG6 that I have. Is there an easy way to tell if it is RG59 or RG6? When TWC came to do the hookup 7 years ago, they used it... I would have thought if it were RG59, they wouldn't have used it. Or, they could have just been too lazy to replace it.
I do have a Scientific Atlanta HD-DVR box as well as a Samsung HD box split out of this line, so I have to assume the cable is good enough.

Thanks for reading.

The amount of signal loss from a coupler really depends on the quality of the coupler. One coupler may have in insertion loss of 0.05 dB while another may be as high as 0.5 dB. However, in general, couplers aren't going to have much insertion loss. Unless you are putting many couplers on the same line it's not going to amount to much.

As for the TA, you should expect to see about 3.5 dB of signal loss.

You should be fine using the existing RG59.

Thank you for the informative post. Since you say the RG59 will be okay, I may just stick with it since it wil be a whole lot easier.
What is the true limiting factor on this type coax? Is there just more signal loss/ attenuation?