CAPITOL SALES 8 Port Distribution Amplifier

It deserves 6 stars. Great rugged piece of equipment. Channel Master makes some good gear. I could tell the quality by the short cable they included for powering the unit, which is the highest quality. Easy to install, works great. Has power indicators on both the power supply and the distributor unit. Recommend.!

This device seems very solid and has performed well, distributing signal to 7 TVs in my home.

A little while ago, I went to to install a C4-CJM Clearstream-4 Antenna on my roof. I had successfully tested it indoors on a short cable directly to one TV. I was getting about 30 digital channels. However, once it went on the roof, it needed 100ft of coax cable to get down to my basement. I also put in a TII 212 Lightning Surge Protector to keep my equipment safe. The problem is, this all dropped the signal immensely. Even without a splitter, I was down to about 25 channels, with one of my favorites freezing up every now and then. Yet the whole point of getting it to the basement was because I wanted to split this out to multiple TVs. With a two-way splitter (-2.5db), it was still bearable. I went down to about 22 channels per TV. However, I wanted to split it up to 3 TVs. When I tried hooking up to every source in my house with an 8-way splitter (-12.5db), it was pretty much useless. A 4-way splitter (-7db) was somewhat bearable, but I did still lose a few channels. Furthermore, the channel that froze up every now and then was now freezing every 3 seconds. That's when I decided to go with this amplifier. As opposed to a loss of signal, the Channel Master CM3418 promised 8-way splitting with a 4.5db gain. I went ahead and hooked this up with all 8 sources in my house (3 actually connected to TVs) and fired it up. The results were excellent! I'm back to 30 digital channels, and the one that flickered was coming in clearly on all 3 TVs! As for quality, the equipment seems well made and sturdy. I mounted it within my media box and was sure to hook up a ground wire. It all looks clean and organized. There is an indicator light to show that power is reaching the unit. The system came with a power adapter and a coax cable (about 3' long) to hook it up. Needless to say, I am very pleased. Excellent quality and excellent price.

The Channel Master is great product. My purpose for using the product was to boost the signal, because of the many cable-splitters we had in our house degraded the channel quality. Channel master was able to boosted the signal where all televisions in the house showed crystal clear, but when it came to using it with my HD PVR it was a no go.

Update -- 12/11/2016: I've been running with this amp for quite some time now. As my earlier review stated my TV distribution before this amp was done by splitting 2-way splitter through another 4-way splitter and I had pixelation issues on the Smithsonian Channel. As we passed from summer through fall into winter most of my problem dissolved. I still get very rare pixelation on some channels but it's no longer unwatchable as things were without this distribution amp. I'm now convinced that I had a problem which was sourced at the CATV company and exacerbated by my earlier setup. So far so good. I bought this to replace a 2-way and a pair of 4-way splitters in my house. After all splitters were considered the theoretical signal loss at my DVR was ~ -20db. I was having issues with signal pixelation on the Smithsonian Channel. In theory replacing my splitters with this amp would boost the CATV signal at my DVR to just -4Db. I have a 2-way splitter at the entry point, the cablemodem gets on side, the TVs share the other. Before I bought this, programming on the Smithsonian Channel would pixelate frequently for 1 ~ 2 seconds at a time. It still pixelates but it doesn't seem to on the programs that I want to watch. Thus, I believe that this amplifier has not completely solved the problem but it has improved things. I'll run a few more tests but I'm starting to believe that at least some of my problem is sourced at the Cable TV company. * Note well * I bought the 8-port version of this product. I have 8 active CATV drops in my house but only 4 TVs. If you have "dead" drops, I have 4, you want to be certain to terminate each those drops with a signal terminator like this: 75 Ohm F Terminator=4-Pack for Cable TV Connections . If you do not terminate the dead drops, an amplifier can create more interference and noise than you had before which makes your problem worse, not better.