FV-HDCO FreeVision Antenna

[robespindola]

novice questions:

I am currently using a cable provider for TV and internet. I would like a backup to cable. I purchased a FreeVision Antenna and mounted outside my house to see how well it will work . Using the cable system built into my house, i am receiving signal to three TVs, one of which is also used as my computer. Is it possible to run the cable feed and the antenna feed through the same coax? My current feed has a splitter at the oustside junction box. Is there a splitter that takes antenna feed and cable feed at the same time?

Also, do i need to buy a pre-Amplifier for each TV or is one sufficient? Which one? (AP-8700?) where do i plug it in and do i have to run any additional wires?

Thank you in advance for your reccomendations!

[winegard]

Good afternoon Robespindola -

You can not combine the CATV (cable) and TV antenna signals onto a single coax cable. The reason being that there will TV antenna channels and CATV channels on the same channel frequency and they will interfere with each other and you will not receive a picture on those channels.

You will have to use an A/B switch to select whether you watch the CATV or TV antenna but only one at a time. If you decide to purse this then the A/B switch has to be mounted in a location where the CATV signal input and the TV antenna signal can be conveniently switched. You state that when you attached the FV-HD30 FreeVision antenna to your existing system you received a TV antenna signal to 3 TV sets so you may not even need an AP-8700 preamplifier at all or you may only need a lower gain preamplifier such as the HDP-269 to over come you system losses.

Another option is to use an HDA-100 distribution amplifier instead of a preamplifier with the FreeVision antenna. You have to be careful and not over amplify the TV antenna signal to a point where you have too much signal for your TV sets to handle.

If you decide to use the HDA-100 you can try it after the output of the A/B switch since the HDA-100 will amplify the frequency range of 54-1000MHz which will cover both the TV antenna and the CATV signals depending on which signals the switch is sending to the amplifier. The HDA-100 has a 5-45MHz return bypass for the computer signal to pass through the amplifier.