Forum Discussion

otronics's avatar
otronics
On our wavelength
10 days ago

Low RF Signal on Second VM box

I have two Virgin TV boxes. 

Here's the set-up:

The Virgin Media service is cabled from the street into the omnibox which on the side of the house.

Here, there is a splitter. One cable goes to the internet on the other side of the house, the other cable goes to the living room.

In the living room, there's another splitter. One cable goes to the VM box for the TV in here (diagnostics show a 98% RF signal strength - great), the other cable goes upstairs (chased into the wall) to the bedroom.

The cable length from the downstairs splitter to the box in the bedroom is about 6 meters and all connections are good and tight.

The upstairs box (an old TiVo box) is only getting 33% RF signal.

Now, the box works but I was wondering if this signal strength is an issue and if so, how to increase said signal.

Thanks.

7 Replies

  • japitts's avatar
    japitts
    Very Insightful Person
    9 days ago

    To an extent, you're trying to diagnose a fault without there being any symptoms to show for it. There is thus an element of "if it's not broke, don't try to fix it"

    If you have any service faults with your TV service, then one of the first checks would be to see whether both your boxes were affected or just one... by swapping the two boxes around. Fault-finding then follows from that, whether the issue is with the internal cabling or the physical equipment.

    Faulty TiVo's are swapped for the newer V6 as a matter of course. Same software but much newer hardware.

  • jpeg1's avatar
    jpeg1
    Alessandro Volta
    9 days ago

    If the tivo is working properly, do you really need to look further? Has anything changed recently? 

    Assuming the 6m cable and terminations were installed correctly by a VM technician, they would have checked that the tivo was getting sufficient signal. 

    If you are really concerned that something is not right you could report a fault and request a technician visit, but if they find nothing wrong you would be charged £25.

  • otronics's avatar
    otronics
    On our wavelength
    7 days ago

    Nothing has changed.

    Thanks for the advice. I'll leave it.

  • Tudor's avatar
    Tudor
    Very Insightful Person
    7 days ago

    You have a double splitter situation which probably is cutting your signal down by at least 6dBm. The up stairs box should really be fed from a 3 way splitter in the omnibox.

  • Roger_Gooner's avatar
    Roger_Gooner
    Alessandro Volta
    7 days ago

    If your TiVo gets a problem due to its low RF signal then Tudor's suggestion is valid as a single 3-way splitter results in lower losses compared with two splitters. At most this will be 1.5dB, which may look small but can be significant.

    • Tudor's avatar
      Tudor
      Very Insightful Person
      7 days ago

      "At most this will be 1.5dB, which may look small but can be significant." Could well be more, I’ve seen splitters with lots of different attenuation values ( various dBm values).

  • Kath_P's avatar
    Kath_P
    Icon for Forum Team rankForum Team
    6 days ago

    Hi otronics, 

    Thanks for taking the time to contact us via the Community. It's lovely having you on board with us in the Forums. ⭐

    As mentioned by Japitts, if the box is having any sort of fault, do please expand on the issues you're having and we can look into things further for you. As it stands, without there being any issues, there'd be no need to do anything as the box is working fine on the signal it's on currently. 

    Many thanks,