I know this seems like a minimal problem when wires can usually be practically run anywhere in a house, but a relative of mine has CATV in only one room of a condo and wants it in another. Would it be possible to somehow get the signal there wirelessly.

Somebody told me to try adding a unidirectional CATV amp to the incoming cable, so it wouldn't be ghosted back to the TV, then putting an antenna after the amp, and then run a recieving antenna in another room with an amp on that to help the reception. The two TVs are 25 feet at most away, but this seems like it still wouldn't work. I know that the cable company does not want you transmitting their signals as maybe the condo next door could get it, but disregarding that, could it even be possible?

Any other device made for this? Or do they just get rabbit ears in that room? :-)

Thanks

This seems like a bad idea. And probably illegal.

You'd be better off buying a perfectly flat RG6 cable.

I purchased something called Leapfrog to transmit cable to my outdoor Gazebo..about 75 ft thru walls..works pretty good

Sony makes location-free TV but the screen is only 12". I think Sharp used to or still does make this kind of set as well in a 17".

OK--Thanks guys.

I knew the original idea was probably bad.

As for flat RG6, I had never even heard of it. I may be able to find a way for it to work.

Does the Leapfrog actually transmit the RF CATV, or do you have it hooked up to a cable box with A/V outputs? This could be an option, but would require adding the cable box to the input and an RF modulator to the output (this TV has no RCA inputs, yet its fairly new...).

OT, used the composite outputs of cable box..guess it depends on type of tv if you would need STB..for not being a hi-tech solution it really works well..even changes channels thru cable box with included ir extender..

He's trying to send the entire raw cable signal wirelessly.

I saw flat cables at CES... they had flat everything, like power and HDMI, that could be run almost anywhere (was designed to be gooped and painted over on drywall).

Actually, flat coax sounds good--painted over would definitely help--it could be run inside doorframes and over the drywall, which is good. (Some of the walls have concrete behind the drywall...pain to drill through, impossible run cable along the length.) I guess it could be hidden enough.

Or I guess a cable box could be obtained...if it can send the IR back to the reciever than channels could be changed, and it would work normally. Then I could just send it through an RF modulator and into the TV.

Thanks for all the help!

Some cable channels are used for airline transmissions. Signal leakage out of early cable systems, which is basically what you have proposed here, was known to affect airplanes several thousand feet up, so a new standard was implemented with a new abbreviation: CLI.
The Cable Leakage Index is the amount that the cable signal is allowed to leak into the air. This happens at poor cable connections. The cable company has at least one truck outfitted with an antenna to drive around and monitor CLI by seeing if they can pick up any cable channels from the air. They would likely shut you down within a year if you broadcast the signals to another room. And your place would look kinda funny with that 747 sticking out of the chimney, too.

Yeah--Its a pretty bad idea. I don't think they would ever find out inside the condo complex, but a bad idea nonetheless. It's the airplane part that suprises me. (Why would they use the same frequencies?)

Anyways, if I cannot get flat RG6 to work I will try to use a A/V transmitter and a cable box.

A major idea of cable, at least in areas where off-air signals are available, was that the signal would NOT be broadcast in any way. They forgot Murphy's Law. They used every available part of the spectrum, and it did not matter in the least what previously assigned frequencies they used, because the signal was supposed to be captive in the cable system.

But if you look at the cable frequencies, it looks like --

they retained 2 - 6 and 7 - 13

They skipped the FM band, then filled up the space between 6 and 7 with channels 14 - 22. Cable systems used to send out the entire FM band, although I never heard one of them advertise it or even mention it

Above 13, they started with channel 23 and just marched up the spectrum 6 mHz at a time, filling the frequencies. By the time they got to 65, they were almost smack on top of UHF 14 (65 - 14 = 51; for most cable channels, you can tell what UHF channel is on the same frequency by subtracitng 51 from the cable channel)

When they got into the nineties, they figured they would stick some channels in the FM band, and they did so, messing up the difference of 51 "rule." Cable systems with FM often kept the FM but remodulated at FM frequencies not used by the cable channels. In our area, a classical music station at 91.5 is at 97.5 on several cable channels.

And then they continued on up the spectrum in a way I haven't bothered to figure out yet.

OTA, if you want separate tuning on the second TV, I'd suggest using another cable box and a wireless AV link, one that sends the remote IR over RF back to the source (transmitter).

Hook up the second cable box in the main room, and send the AV out of this box to the second TV over the wireless AV link. It should be easy to shield each box from the other's IR.

I used to live in Northern Va., in Fairfax Co. They had a dual 60-channels-per-cable dual-cable system. I still have half a spool of their Siamese quad-shield RG-59.

They used to simulcast the movie channels (HBO, C-max, Sho, and TMC) over FM in stereo, before MTS/SAP, on the same cable, requiring a simple splitter on cable"A".

Of course, this was in the days of plain Dolby Surround, but the effect was as good as VHS hi-fi. Not very many people had surround-sound from their cable TV back then.

Actually I would just need one. There is none present now as it is basic cable and the tuner is integrated in the main TV.

In that case, you could get away with using a VCR as a tuner.