A loss is a loss, regardless of if it's done in the cabinet or the far end. I could argue that it's better to have it at away from the cabnet because when you weaken the signal, you also weaken any noise that has gotten into the system.harddrive wrote:However the problem is that when you put in splitters they degrade the signal as they go along. So you want to put your splitter right after an amplifier.
One way CCtv is done is have a single high-power amp in the cabinet. Maybe 100 dB output and send it down the line. At the first outlet, you have a tap that splits the signal and adds an attenuator to outlet. The near outlet will have a large attenuator, the far one will have a small one. That way the signal level says reasonably consistent regardless of the length of the cable run.
You could well have a hybrid setup. Each cable leaves the cabinet and heads for a different area of the building. But it may cover more than one outlet. For example, the outlet on each side of the stage might be fed by a single cable.
True, but to do a "home run" from each outlet requires more cable and more labor to do all those runs. In other words, it costs more. Now, think about who is designing the system and what their priorities are. (And how often wire fails.) Is each outlet on the stage going to have it's own run, or will it be a tap and a jump over the stage?harddrive wrote:Second is if there is a problem in the system, this way it make is much easier to troubleshoot a problem.
Bottom line, we're not the designers or installers. We just inherit what has been done. And repurposing a RF cable run as a baseband cable run is going to be iffy.
But now contemplate this: I've discovered that our new satellite receivers have a Ethernet connector and support multicast. (Not that it helps with local events.)