Gladly! Here is the situation: you have two signal sources that are feeding your TV using essentially the same frequency ranges. OTA antennas feed VHF Low, FM Radio, VHF High, and UHF to your TV, but so do CATV systems, albeit with their own sub-channel maps over the same frequencies. They do not get along with eachother.
This frequency overlap is due to historic reasons because in the 1950s-60s there were no Set Top Boxes yet for cable channel tuning, so the CATV providers had to overlap the regular 13 VHF channels and later the UHF channels with their own signals in order to feed your TV. This is why CATV gear is so heavily shielded to this day - there is a direct conflict with OTA. If we could redo CATV all over again I'd advocate assigning a third range of frequencies apart from TV and Satellite.
So, if you simply connect the antenna and the CATV with a splitter you will cause signal leakage of the CATV signals through your antenna and vice-versa, which will cause garble and interference not only for yourself but for your neighbours too. Connections like that are ILLEGAL. Industry Canada and CATV providers constantly check for signal leakage and will come down really hard on you if you let it happen. The leakage problem does not happen with Satellite because its incoming signals are way off in another part of the frequency spectrum from TV.
What is the solution then? An A-B input switch is one method, or if your TV has 2 coax inputs you could test to see if they are discrete (separated inside to prevent leakage). Some people run the OTA lead right into the TV and the CATV lead into the VCR and then over Composite or SVHS into the TV. There are a few solutions like that if you think about it. I think there might be remote control capable A-B CATV/Antenna coax switches out there too.
Check out previous posts in the OTA Forum by HDTV101 and others about this issue.
This frequency overlap is due to historic reasons because in the 1950s-60s there were no Set Top Boxes yet for cable channel tuning, so the CATV providers had to overlap the regular 13 VHF channels and later the UHF channels with their own signals in order to feed your TV. This is why CATV gear is so heavily shielded to this day - there is a direct conflict with OTA. If we could redo CATV all over again I'd advocate assigning a third range of frequencies apart from TV and Satellite.
So, if you simply connect the antenna and the CATV with a splitter you will cause signal leakage of the CATV signals through your antenna and vice-versa, which will cause garble and interference not only for yourself but for your neighbours too. Connections like that are ILLEGAL. Industry Canada and CATV providers constantly check for signal leakage and will come down really hard on you if you let it happen. The leakage problem does not happen with Satellite because its incoming signals are way off in another part of the frequency spectrum from TV.
What is the solution then? An A-B input switch is one method, or if your TV has 2 coax inputs you could test to see if they are discrete (separated inside to prevent leakage). Some people run the OTA lead right into the TV and the CATV lead into the VCR and then over Composite or SVHS into the TV. There are a few solutions like that if you think about it. I think there might be remote control capable A-B CATV/Antenna coax switches out there too.
Check out previous posts in the OTA Forum by HDTV101 and others about this issue.
