"Video Amplifier" - Real product or scam?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m having problems with the cable tv at my house. I added a new jack over the weekend and I had to “upgrade” from a four way splitter to a 6 way splitter to accomodate the additional jack (that is, the cable used to come to the house and be split 4 ways, now it is split 6 ways). Not surprisingly, my tv picture now sucks.

The Home Depot sells a product labelled as a “video amplifier” which I understand boosts the cable signal and may overcome my excessive signal splitting problem. Anyone have any experience with these? Do they work?

2

Yes, although it will of course amplify noise as well as the signal. Put it in front of the splitter. YMMV.

3

Video amps are real products and not scams. The more ways you split a video signal, the weaker it gets. Too many splits and you need an amp.

That said, if the picture was fine with the 4-way, you may just be suffering from a crappy 6-way splitter. They’re not all equal. If I’m reading your post correctly you also have an unterminated leg on the splitter, and that might be complicating things. Or it might not…often enough it has no real impact, but in theory unterminated legs can cause various nasty effects that do show up sometimes in practice as well.

One possible alternative is to go back to the 4-way, and just add an additional 2-way splitter (cheaper to get a good one of these than a good 5 or 6-way) to one of the output legs. Stick your least-used TVs on those two legs.

4

I have one that the cable company installed (free) when they initially hooked up my cable. The stretch between the street box and my house was too long and the signal needed more strength.
I think they called it a “signal booster” rather than a “video amplifier”.

5

It might be worth a call to the cable provider to verify that the signal being received at your point of demarcation is meeting standard. If one of their line amps is borderline, your signal could be, also.
It is also possible that the 6 way splitter you purchased is faulty. And, you added the additional jack, and I assume the cable run. Not casting aspersions at your abilities in this area, but I’d disconnect the new run, install a 75 ohm termination and see if that improves the picture.

6

Cast away - I have my own doubts, especially with regard to the ends I put on.

The cable company is coming out tomorrow, I’ll try to give the tech enough privacy so that he can laugh at me without having to do it to my face.

We’ll see what happens.

7

This website has a good description of video losses in splitters (and length of cable, too) and how to compensate for them.

An amplifier is definitely useful if you are splitting the signal many times.