Digital Cable and Monster Power (1 Viewer)

[Tim L]

Has anyone hooked up their digital cable line through a monster line conditioner unit/ I was wondering if it made a diffrence at all? My cable guy said not to do it because I have a booster hooked up becasue I am so far off the road and said it woould be too much for the line conditioner- any thought on this?
Tim

 

[Mort Corey]

I don't have a "booster" but I input my cable into my Panamax 5100 (same idea as your Monster) then out to the cable box and into the TV receiver unit.....and have no problems. I've run it direct, bypassing the line conditioner/surge supressor, and cannot tell any difference in PQ at all.

Mort

 

[Steven_Jobe]

Well being that you do have what you call a "booster", or in otherwords an outboard cable amp, it very well may be too much for the power conditioner. It depends on how much the amp has boosted your signal.

If your amp only boosted the signal to what a normal cable tv line should be at, then you're ok to run it through the powercenter.

If your amp boosted the signal above and beyond what a normal cable signal would be, then it very well could cause problems with the conditioner as it could send too much amperage or power to it. This is, to my knowledge, very unlikely but I'm not too keen on this subject so I'm unsure. I do however know that if it was too high a power then it would be like sending surges(which are high power peaks) to your supressor all the time and would cause it go either shut off your cable signal(depending on the powercenter's specs and capabilities), or it could just run the surge protection out very very quickly.

If someone is more educated on this subject please help him, I'm just using what little knowledge I have and am putting 2 and 2 together in theory.

 

[Tim L]

Thanks for the replies, I don't want to run the risk of wrecking a fairly expensive power line unit just to watch cable. I truly wanted to do it if it made a diffrence in quality. I appreciate all theinsight- if anyone else has any experience with this I would appreciate hearing about it, thanks
Tim

 

[Bob McElfresh]

Let's be careful here.

Most of the "Line Conditioners" and "Surge Supressors" do nothing to 'condition' the CATV jacks.

What they DO have is a small circuit that checks for sudden, high-voltage coming in through the CATV coax and if found, shunts it to the AC power ground to avoid frying your TV/VCR/CATV box if lightning hits the wires.

So the "F" jacks act like a surge-supressor, not a conditioner.

Normally, the break in the coax to run it through the power-strip causes little-to-no VIDEO signal loss. BUT: the number 1 cause of poor video/CATV service calls is loose connectors. Make sure you tighten the "F" connectors down - about 1/4 turn past finger tight with pliers/wrench.

Where these power-strips with coax jacks DO cause problems: cable modems. The jacks are designed to pass-through RF analog frequencies. GigaHertz digital signals - may not pass well.

It wont hurt to try it and see. Just make sure to test ALL your channels for poor signal. Some types of cable damage affect some channels more than others.