2 TVs and a TiVo

January 8, 2004 1:46 PM

I have TiVo set up in the living room, and a television without cable in the bedroom. I figure it would be possible to split the cable before it hits the TiVo and get cable in the bedroom, but I'm not sure if it would make TiVo appear in the television in there as well. Any insights? I'm obviously clueless.
posted by agregoli to Technology (8 answers total)

Yes, you should be able to split the cable before it goes to the Tivo. I assume you have another cable that runs from your Tivo to your TV in the living room, right?
posted by tranquileye at 1:54 PM on January 8, 2004

Just get a splitter from Radio Shack (or anywhere else) and you'll be fine. Since the signal splits before it the TiVo will only play on the one TV. I don't own a TiVo but I'm assuming the connections are similar to a VCR.

I'm assuming the TV in the bedroom is cable ready?
posted by bondcliff at 1:56 PM on January 8, 2004

I did this without a problem - I split the cable before the Tivo and ran the split to the same TV into another Input so I could Tivo something and watch something else. But it's the same concept.

The catch is that if you have digital cable or premium channels, you won't be able to see them on the second TV.
posted by drobot at 1:56 PM on January 8, 2004

Response by poster: Yes, there is a cable that goes from the wall to TiVo, and a cable from the same area that goes to feed my computer (digital cable). If I run another cable out of there, I'm assuming I can have regular cable in the bedroom.
posted by agregoli at 2:03 PM on January 8, 2004

Response by poster: Argh, I have digital cable. So perhaps not....weirdness. You know, back in the day, I used to be able to set up this kind of stuff...technology is so complicated now. At least to me. Thanks for the input, guys.
posted by agregoli at 2:28 PM on January 8, 2004

Sorry, I wasn't so clear before - your plan should still work even with digital cable, you'll just be viewing the analog signal on your bedroom TV (unless you get a digital tuner for the bedroom). Even though you have digital cable, which requires a box, you still get the analog signal as well, which should be fine if your bedroom TV is cable-ready.
posted by drobot at 2:38 PM on January 8, 2004

agregoli, your cable provider may even provide you with a second digital cable box, gratis or nearly so, if you ask for it. You could put this second decoder at the end of the (already split) cable in the bedroom, and have digital cable in there, even though you have no TiVo. (This is what I have going on in my house: raw cable comes in, is split to (1) a digital cable box connected to a TV, and (2) another digital cable box ? TiVo ? TV).

If you choose not to use the digital cable box, you will get the analog signal only (as other posters have said), which is enough for network TV, Cartoon Network, etc. (but not, for example, BBC America).
posted by dsandl at 2:48 PM on January 8, 2004

of course you need to split the cable before it hits the digital cable box also. i don't know if that was assumed.
posted by rhyax at 7:27 PM on January 8, 2004