Tried this on the entry, middle and end points of my cable and it proved worthless.

Works well if you have a single line cable routed through you house like I do. The cable signal degrades along the length of the line so I have one of these at the entry point and one in the middle which helps keep the signal strength high throughout the house. Doesn't work well if your signal coming in is already crap, it works to boost healthy signals and maintain them through the house.

I had one of these and it worked well for 2 years. I recently started to lose some channels. I thought it was the DVR but when I took this thing out of the loop the channels came back. It's possible that my cableco did something to increase signal strength to cause this because once I took it out of the loop, my original reception issues where not present.

don't be a fool and buy this, most cable companies will give you one IF in fact you actually need one. Most signal problems are customer caused! Don't try and "fix" your own cable if you don't have a dsam of your own. If you don't know what a dsam is then you shouldn't pretend you know anything about cable.

You can get signal strength from logging into your cable modem via browser. My motorola modem is accessed via IP 192.168.100.1 logging in as "admin" with password "motorola". If you're a cablevision customer try going to http://192.168.100.1 and see if you can log in.

#4, are you the cable dude who tracked mud all over my new hardwood??