immortal_zeus

I'm not really sure if this is appropriate for this forum, but this seemed to be the most appropriate....

I have digital cable in the living room....but in my bedroom, I have "basic" cable which requires to wires to be plugged into some kind of A/B connector which then connects to my TV in the bedroom. So I can watch like the network channels and some other cable channels on the "A" side, but I have to switch it to "B" (by manually getting up out of bed and hitting the "B" button) if I want to watch other cable channels like ESPN, FX, etc. Is there something that I can buy (from Radio Shack or somewhere) which does not require me to get up off of my lazy *** and switch the A/B thing? I don't watch a huge amount of TV in the bedroom, so I opted not to get a digital cable box in the bedroom....still, it'd be nice to not have to get up and switch the button if I wanted to go from NBC to ESPN....

Thanks.

JsphOfArimethia

Get rid of the A/B switch and all the wires connected to it (or give them back to your cable company ). For your purposes it's useless. Use a low loss splitter to connect your bedroom. Split the signal before it gets to the cable box, send one wire to your bedroom, and one to the cable box from there. You're now free to be a lazy bum. Welcome to the club.

immortal_zeus

The wires connected to the A/B switch are coming out of the wall...I don't think I can get rid of those, can I? Also, I don't have a cable box for the bedroom....the 2 wires from the wall (I assume one for "A" and one for "B") connect to the A/B switch which then connects to my TV directly via another wire.

powaking

Sounds like your town way back when had 2 wires going into the homes. since the wires did not have the bandwidth to support the higher channels they just ran 2 wires. On the cable boxes (if some of you remember) there was an a/b button. clickingon the b button would then activate the other wire. Not sure what youcan do but how about taking a spliter and hooking it up backwards. Put the 2 wires into the 2 Outputs of the splitter and then put the other wire going to the tv into the Input of the TV. Sounds backwards I know but give it a whirl. The only problem I see is if the 2 different channels use the same frequency and then get popped onto the same wire.

Let us know.

immortal_zeus

That's a pretty good idea. I think I'll stop by Radio Shack and see if anybody in there knows (cause I know that there are some other places here in San Jose that have AT&T cable and use this damn A/B switch). Do you think that by trying this, I could somehow short circuit the wires or something?

Do you mean if channel 4 is different for the A or B side? For example, channel 4 is NBC on the A side and ESPN (or FX, can't remember) on the B side. Is that what you mean by frequency or am I talking about something else?

Thanks for your help.

JsphOfArimethia

Two wires coming out of the wall huh. Ok, we can get around this. Don't lose hope. Though I agree with powaking, sounds old. Way to go San Jo. And here I thought AT&T (formerly TCI) of Alameda was backwoods. OK, first off, you shouldn't need a cable box in your bedroom to receive just the "extended basic" channels. All you should need is one RF cable, and your TV's tuner should take care of the rest. Here's the thing. The signal you feed that TV has to come from the source signal. The line coming into your house from outside. Usually this is just one line that the installers plug straight into your cable box. The A/B switch is a separate component. It comes second in line after the cable box. In-between the box and, usually, the TV or the VCR. So your should be able to bypass it. How many cables, and what kind of cables, are going in to you cable box? My guess is two, but if it's one this will be easy. Buy yourself a two-line splitter and a one foot length of RF-5 cable. Take the source cable (screwed into your cable box), connect the splitters input to it, connect one out back into your cable box, and the other to the cable going to your bedroom TV. If that doesn't work, start getting descriptive.

How many cables you got going on?
What kind of cable is which?
This one comes from where, goes to where?
What are the connections labeled? If labeled. Usually the back of the cable box has a label for all inputs and outputs.
Any other material that I can use to map this out in my head.

powaking

immortal_zeus:

Yes, thats pretty much what I was saying. The reason they ran 2 cables is because the cables could only handle say 450mhz (today its about 750mhz+). So they probably could only fit 40+ channels on each wire. In order to offer more channels they would need to run another cable independent from the other. Now when you look at both cables channel 5 on cable A is running on (for arguments sake) 40mhz and channel 55 on cable B is also running on 40mhz (remember, both cables are independent), if you split both cables into 1 you might get interference. I'm not sure what the output is going to be when you put both cables into the splitter and have the 1 cable going into your TV.

You won't short anything. Might get some interference, thats all.

My father kind of did something like this. He had the cable and satellite downstairs and wanted to run both upstairs but only use 1 cable, so he put the cable and satellite into the Outputs of the splitter and ran a cable out of the Input up to the TV. This worked, its just when we turned the satellite on it was getting some interference (not a whole lot) due to riding on the same frequency as the cable channels.

Its worth a try.

immortal_zeus

Thanks for the help you two.

I'll go take a look at the wires tonight so I can be more specific/descriptive...

ANDREMIKE

I never heard of such a thing? Are you sure one cable isn't the TV antenna? Sometimes they us A/B switches to switch betweem antenna and cable....just in case the cable goes out. You should get all of the channels if you set your switch to B Including the locals.


If you do have some sort of screwed up set-up that I have never heard of then you could this....
If your TV has multiple inputs then you could do the following
Send one feed into the VCR and the RCA cables into the TV input #1. Then you could send the other signal into the TV. Now you could switch between TV and VCR with the remote.