Getting radio signals through my TV cable? (1 Viewer)

[KevinCK]

I just ended up buying the beginnings of my first home theater on boxingday sales.

Pioneer DVD-343

Yamaha Rv-420 Receiver

Paradigm Monitor 7 Speakers

After moving my old noname speakers to the rear i now at least have some sort of digital surround sound. Waiting until i move out of the apartment and into a house before i get the subwoofer and i'll do without a center or matching surrounds untill the budget allows it.

My question is about radio. The yamaha has a tuner and i get a few radio stations from it. It comes with both an FM and an AM antenna. However i was under the impression that i could hook up my cable television to my receiver and get radio stations through it. I just want to make sure this is the case before i start connecting things. The FM jack on the receiver looks exactly like a female RF jack (same as on the back of my TV or VCR to hook up the tv cable). I do have a cable splitter.

Should this work or will i destroy something?

And if it does work, will i be able to receive any radio station that my car can get from just outside my building? Is it up to my cable tv provider as to what they transmit through the cable? There are a few that my car will receive but even with the small FM antenna provided i can barely get that station (apartments are always annoying for that) and this is the reason why i'm considering this cable hookup.

Thanks to anyone who replies.

Kevin

 

[Dave Poehlman]

I believe that jack would be for an external 75 Ohm antenna. A lot of them come with the coax type connection.. I know because I just moved out to the boonies and bought a new antenna and my receiver doesn't have a coax rf input like yours so, I had to use an adapter.
I wouldn't go plugging the cable in there. That sounds like it could do some damage. At the very least, check with your cable company first. And if your cable provider is anything like mine... you will be on the phone for an hour and transferred 7 times.

 

[Kurt B]

And if your cable provider is anything like mine... you will be on the phone for an hour and transferred 7 times.

Only an hour and only 7 transfers? I'm impressed. You must have Warner cable I'm on Charter and gads, to get help
Way back when, I was able to hook up my cable to the input on my receiver and get radio stations tuned in. With the advent of digital cable, that went away. Now the only choice is digital cable to get radio, at least up here.
~Kurt

 

[Dave Poehlman]

Way back when, I was able to hook up my cable to the input on my receiver and get radio stations tuned in.

I don't think I ever knew this was an option. So, maybe you can do it, Kevin. Perhaps I should start dialing "customer service" now to see if I have that option. I should have the answer by Friday.

 

[Kurt B]

But, I never said I would get an answer out of them.

So true! I wish we had Warner up here, I'm north of you about an hour or so, as RR is much better cable modem than Charter.

I do know it was a few years ago that I was able to hook up the cable to my receiver and get radio stations. I do know that now they don't offer it here as they have a service on digital cable in it's place at a cost of course.

~Kurt

 

[Chuck_C]

Kevin - That antenna input goes to your receiver's tuner and is only for a Radio Frequency signal such as your antenna receives. A decent FM antenna should help pick up local stations.

The radio channels or music channels that are on cable can be run through your receiver via the "cable/satellite" input. That audio on those channels are just the same as a regular cable sation but without picture- well, I guess you could call it a picture, they usually have a message with the artist and song on the TV screen.

Anyway, DON'T hook the cable line to your antenna input.

 

[KevinCK]

Thanks for the information everyone. I guess I'll just deal with lackluster radio reception for now. Not that we listen to it that much at home, I just thought I'd like to have the option open.

Kevin

 

[Jim_Stu]

Kevin,

The TV 'rabbit ear' antennas work pretty good

for FM.

JRS

 

[Richard Travale]

I am not sure about where you are but that's exactly what it's for here. Cable FM is a service that you pay for and the cable goes into the back of your receiver. I have had Cable FM for a few years now and it works fine. You just need to find out what frequencies each station uses. Your cable provider will provide this to you.

If anyone knows otherwise for sure, let me know because I am going to have some cross words with my cable provider if I am in fact wrecking my equipment

 

[Allan Jayne]

Car radios are on average more sensitive than home radios and stereo receivers, especially on AM.
You can hook up any indoor or outdoor VHF TV antenna to the radio FM antenna inputs.
It is OK to hook up the cable TV feed to the FM radio antenna terminals but nothing will be received unless the cable company carried the stations or if they leaked into the cable simply because it was strung in the air from utility pole to utility pole. You probably won't want to because you will need a splitter to also feed the TV and the share of the signal going to the TV may be too weak.
If the radio has two screw terminals for the FM antenna and the antenna feed is a coax, get a "75 ohm to 300 ohm transformer" from Radio Shack, it has a matching coax jack and two pigtail wires to make the connection with.
For AM radio, use the antenna supplied with the radio, and/or connect a non-coaxial wire, the longer the better, to the terminal (trial and error if more than one terminal) and stretch it out. If you are into ham radio you can follow the rules for a "medium wave" antenna. Some sets require that the supplied antenna be connected at all times.
Video hints:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/video.htm

 

[Steve Berger]

Actually a lot of cable companies put standard FM stations on their lines since the frequencies fall between CH 6 & 7 and don't require any fancy processing to do it. Instead of a splitter use a band separator which will separate the different frequencies without any significant signal losses. Just make sure that you are picking off the signal before any cable boxes.

 

[Selden Ball]

Our local Time Warner cable franchise includes quite a few FM radio stations on their cable system. They're listed on the "channel lineup" card. They are in addition to the Dolby Digital stereo music channels. Most radio stations are frequency shifted to try to avoid interference problems which are sometimes caused when a local station's signal leaks into the cable.

Hooking up the cable to the 75 Ohm tuner RF input connection on your receiver will work just fine, although (as previously mentioned) you should use a splitter so that the connection is before the cable box. Most digital cable boxes only output the currently tuned cable TV channel on their RF outputs.

I hope this helps a little.