Boosting Cable Tv Signal

4 Stupid Tech Tricks, Tested

The tech world is full of silly tricks that everyone has done once or twice, but not everyone knows exactly why (or whether) they really work. From pointing your car key fob at your jaw to improve range, to using a small child to improve your TV's antenna reception, we've decided to get to the bottom of these shenanigans once and for all.

Tech urban legend says that you can increase your car's key fob by strategically pointing it at your head--something to do with the shape of your skull acting as a directional antenna of sorts. Skeptical? So were we--until we tested it with PCWorld Editorial Director Steve Fox's car in our parking lot.

First, we tried to establish the key fob's maximum range with a standard grip while maintaining a line-of-sight connection--which turned out to be about 100 feet from the car. At that distance, we found, the car responded to 1 of every 20 to 30 button presses. Then we had four different staffers lock and unlock the car while pointing the key fob at our heads, either holding it up against the bottom of our chins or pointing it at our temples (as though we were playing Russian Roulette). To our surprise, this method enabled us to move an additional 40 feet or so away from the car and still get effective performance from the key fob; at that point we reached the wall of the parking lot, putting an end to the experiment. Different people achieved their best results by holding the key fob at different parts of their head--presumably because the shapes of their skulls differed--but the trick clearly was effective.

The verdict: Well, it worked for us. Try it yourself if you don't believe us.

Gray screen? Pull the game out and blow. Distorted graphics? Blow. Can't beat Air Man in Mega Man 2? Might as well try. But why did this seem to work? GamePro editor Kat Bailey says: "The [cartridge-console contact points] would get dirty, so people tried to solve the problem by blowing into it. It seemed to work, but that's probably due more to the fact that people were also pulling the game out and sticking it back into the system. In reality, it oxidized the connectors and made everything worse.

Motorola Signal Booster BDA-S1 1-Port Cable Modem TV HDTV ...

The cable signal entering my household is somehwat low power (we be in this world at the end of a lingering line), then it gets split 2 traditions to a cable modem and a foremost distribution amp, each getting -9dB of signal (per the cable modem diag page). Then one of the legs from that DA gets split another four traditions. The lines frankly off the DA had an okay digital and analog signal. The lines off the 4 way splitter had a rather noisy analog signal but no digital TV would notice any of the digital channels, much a cut-rate amount of attempt to pixelate. I together this amp just before the initial 2-way splitter. The cable modem indicated +3dB and the SNR of the digital signals were improved on the lines frankly off the DA (although there was no visual difference of course). The lines off the 4-way splitter now have a very clear analog signal as well as sufficiently high signal to receive the digital channels.

I have a 8×1 cable splitter (cable to each room) and a splitter for broadband (before the 8×1). In addition, I got a TV tuning card for my PC that has separate inputs for analog and HD, so I needed another splitter (after the 8×1). Too loads of splitters were lowering my video quality and making it hard to receive HD signals on my TV tuning card. I left the at the start splitter for the broadband (installed by the cable co.) so that my broadband did not go owing to the BDA. Then I inserted the BDA on the video signals before the 8×1 splitter. Now each cable output works impeccably with low noise on the analog channels and no difficulties on the HD channels. I have had this hooked up for in this vicinity 6 months now and never had an issue.

I’ve got a Terk indoor directional antenna. Sorry to say I didn’t get the version with the built in amp, so I picked this one up after-market. I be in this world in this vicinity 30 miles from most of our community stations. Of the 17 available stations, I probably got in this vicinity ten before I added this jab. After putting in the jab I got… in this vicinity ten. Doesn’t look like it made a difference one way or another. Oh well. Still, it’s cheaper than a cable bill.

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