Splitting Camera Video?

[Mark S.]

Never EVER split a video lead. (Pay no attention to our fearless leader)

NEVER EVER!

SkiBum-
Thanks for the rather emphatic warning! But are you saying no because of an anticipated reduction in picture quality, or is there some other technical reason? In other words, it's not going to melt my camera or release some kind of electronic demon into my system, is it?

Shawn and Chakara -
I use this modulator. It is relatively inexpensive and has survived 4 years so far in a hot/cold attic space. As has been said before, I don't think you can use these with digital (sattelite) signals.

Mark

 

[Skibum]

Nah... I was just being my expressive self!

Your camera will not melt, and your TV will not turn to JELLO. :blink:

 

[rocco]

Never EVER split a video lead. (Pay no attention to our fearless leader)

Isn't that mutiny?

In general, I would agree with Ski. When you use a splitter, the signal then has to feed TWO 75 ohm terminators, and that attenuates the signal by half. That's the basic rule.

But rules are made to be broken, and two things help us to break that rule:
1) Some high-end video equipment have auto-termination. The device disconnects its terminator if it detects another terminator on the line.
2) Some high-end video equipment have automatic-gain-control. The device amplifies an attenuated signal back up to where it should be.

I would contend that E's 56-inch TV qualifies as high-end :blink:

 

[easytim]

Splitting the video signal never worked for me that way. I had to get an electronic video splitter that also amplfies the signal a little bit to help stop video signal loss from doing the splitting.

 

[justonemore]

I have split feeds to both my media encoder and 1 tv set. I gotta tell you that it created a total negative WAF. At least in my situation the quality looked like crap.

 

[rocco]

The trick is to have everything in a chain (no Ys), with only one terminator at the end. I've run half a dozen monitors from the same video source this way, using the loop-through on each monitor and only terminating the last one.

 

[Shawn]

Mark - Thanks for the info.