co-ax on surge protector (1 Viewer)

[DerekCV]

Does anyone use the co-ax, or other various inputs, on a surge protector besides pluging 120 volt stuff?

Thanks.

 

[Phil A]

I don't but all I have is an antenna in the attic so I don't think it has a great chance of being struck by lightning. The purpose of those is to prevent a surge coming from the cable. What is your co-ax hooked to (e.g. cable, satellite, etc.)?

 

[DerekCV]

I have a digital cable box... soon to be HD

 

[Dan J]

I had it running through the surge protector (Monster) but the picture wasn't quite as clean as before so I removed it.

I talked to the cable guy recently whho said that my boxes (Scientific Atlanta 8300HD) had a built in surge protector. Is it as good? I dunno, and I hope to never find out.

Dan

 

[Phil A]

With many of the devices, I'm sure there is some small signal loss probably like 0.5db for going thru it. It is an easy decision in my case.

 

[Bob McElfresh]

One thing the coax connector on a surge protector does is tie the "shield" of the CATV coax to your power ground (the third prong on the power plug).

Sometimes - this solves hum that comes in on your CATV line (The CATV picks up 60 hz by running in parallel with power wires.)

But - it is a break in the signal path. If you were feeding a weak analog CATV signal through it - I would try to avoid the extra break. If the coax is bringing in a digital signal - it's a lot less likely to cause problems running through a power strip.