Home Automation - Coax - fuzzy?

On the 1st floor of my house I have coax running to 1) my cable modem, and 2) my TV (no cable box). Off of a 3 way splitter I had the spare (3rd port) lead to another 2 way splitter. Of which I only used 1 for a TV in my upstairs bedroom. Still following me???? OK, I was fighting with grounding upstairs at the bedroom TV area and a fuzzy signal. After I re-cut and connectorized all connections at the TV and wall, I finally removed the 2nd splitter and ran the bedroom TV directly off the 3rd port of the 1st splitter. The fuzziness is gone and looks great.

My issue is: Do you think the 2nd splitter was "faulty" with bad grounding OR was I attenuating the signal by using a 2nd splitter? Basically I want the option of running a 4th coax source for another TVin the future. When do you lose enough bandwith to seriously weaken the signal to very poor picture quality?

Thanks for everyone's help. Peace: e3 - spamman

I would first replace the splitter with a different one. I've ran 2 splitters before with no problem. But you may be at the end of a line(weak signal), and the splitter may make it worse. You can try an amplifier between the 1st and 2nd splitter.

I would guess that the 2 w splitter was defective. Removing it only increases the signal marginally, not enough to go from snowy pix to clear pix. It's not a grounding problem, just bad components in the splitter.

A typical cable tv drop should have enough signal for 2 outlets (1 two way splitter). Anything more than that could be a problem. There are a lot of other varialbles such as distance from the pole, type of cable used, distance from the splitter to the TV.

If you continue to have problems, have you local cable company check out the signal at the pole, and the cable and connections at your house.

Thanks for the suggestions. Another question I have is how effective is an amplifier? Is it a passive or active component? If I need to run some 110V to an amplifier, that is an easy option for me. Thanks. Peace: e3 - spamman

An amplifier is an active device - it needs AC power to run. It is effective for multiple outlets. As a first step, make sure you have adequate signal at the pole and at the side of the house. The cable company is responsible for that.

Thanks again. I will call the cable co. but they are a bunch of weenies. I have fought with them for a while in the past. If they can measure the signal strength and compare it to a standard to which they need to comply will be a suprise to me. But I will try. Peace: e3 - spamman