Lots of misinformation here. Digital cable is actually much more forgiving than analog. Analog will gradually degrade to noise and snow as the signal level drops. A digital signal can go much lower and the picture quality will be unaffected- until it reaches a certain point and then you get nothing.
So all of you guys who think you have to do special things for "digital" it just ain't true. Even those 2 Ghz "digital" gold plated splitters are only designed to make your wallet lighter. They are brought to you by the same folks who sell gold plated receptacles that will make your stereo sound better. Not going to happen any more than a "digital" splitter is going to make your picture better. The $2 1 Ghz ones have the same thru loss and will work just the same considering no cable system goes above 750 Mhz.
That said, doing stuff like this by the seat of your pants is not the way to go and invites problems. There is a lot more to it than running some cable and throwing splitters in somewhere to connect everything together. If you don't know how to determine and calculate signal levels and don't have the equipment to do it, well, you shouldn't be doing it.
The first place to look here would be the splitter. Bad port? Yup it happens. Try switching the home runs around and make sure the feed is on the "in". Of course the possibility exists that you may have reached that "digital point of no return" where, because of bad design and endless splitters the level to that set is below what will work.
An amplifier is not the answer until the mess is cleaned up first and then through calculation and measurement it's determined that a certain amount of gain is necessary.
-Hal
[This message has been edited by hbiss (edited 07-08-2006).]
