A client told us we would put four RF-controlled Sony DSS receivers in his basement. We did so. We got up to twenty feet of RF range, straight up only. The whole rest of the two-story house was dead. Too much oncrete or steel, indeed!

Astonishingly, a friend suggested I solve this by pretending that an unused pair from a CAT-5 was RG-6 and using it to run the signal from far locations to the receivers. Not only did it work, but we used a 3-way splitter to mix three antennas at different places in the house, then amplified the signal 10 db with a cable amp and split it four ways to go into the receivers. Voila! Range where we had none.


It helps to use a signal level meter to "fish" for the remote's output frequency while pushing buttons. The Sonys were around 320 mHz, so a TV amp would not work, but a cable amp would.