Cable Sensitivity

[gadcmc]

Hope someone can help with this one as I'm stumped. My house was cabled when I moved in. Nothing special. A coax drop in each room. My primary source is satellite but I have basic cable in some rooms as a contingency. In one of these rooms, I have cable TV, basic service, no cable box. Works great. I wanted to change this room to satellite (I have satellite in 4 other rooms), Unfortunately, I can't get a signal when I reconfigure to use a satellite feed. I just get the searching for signal message.

On a whim, I ran a 50 ft cable between the receiver in this room and my incoming satellite splitter. This works great too.

So when I connect to the coax connector in the wall, cable works and satellite does not. When I connect satellite directly it works great using the same equipment.

Is it possible a cable would work for cable TV and not for satellite TV?

[sswheeler]

Sounds like you need to disconnect the drop from cable and install a switch to add more outputs from the dish. You can not split the signal from one coax to 2. You need the proper switch to activate more than 4 from the dish.

[Rockaway1836]

Take the switchplate off the wall and check the connecter. I had something like this at my sisters house. It drove me nuts for a while. I did the same as you did by running a cable from the dish through a window directly to the receiver. I took the switch plate off and found who ever ran the cable had stripped the cable too much. It was just copper and a twist on connecter. I found all runs in the house to be the same. I stripped the wire the right way and relplaced the twist ons with compression connecters. Every thing works great now.

[DJTheC]

Ugh, splitters can be a nightmare in those houses... but just like the last post, check your connections behind the wall plate.