Motorola Signal Booster 4-Port BDA-S4 Cable Modem TV HDTV Amplifier

Other products by Motorola

Product Details

• Item Weight: 2.5 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Note: Gift-wrapping is not available for this item.
• ASIN: B000WPGRKK
• Item model number: BDA-S4
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank

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  Electronics > Computers & Accessories > Networking Products > Modems

• Date first available at Amazon.com: March 19, 2008

Product Description

Product Description

There is nothing worse than having a great TV to watch your favorite programs, while having a grainy or pixilated (digital cable) picture. Motorola BDA amplifiers give your TV signal a boost while maintaining full compatibility with all of your cable services. Simply install the BDA-S4 where your cable or antenna comes into your house and begin enjoying a better picture, faster downloads, and a more reliable HD or Digital TV signal. With a name like Motorola, how can you go wrong? The BDA-S4 is fully compatible with all cable TV standards, cable boxes, cable modems, routers, HDTV and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Works wonders for spotty cable reception, January 13, 2009

By	Chris Boylan "MrBoylan" (Astoria, NY USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is the 4-port version of the Motorola Signal Booster, combining that product's high-quality 15 dB cable/antenna drop amplifier with an integrated 4-port splitter so you can use this device with up to four TVs (or a cable modem and three TVs) without having to buy a separate high-bandwidth signal splitter.

So who would benefit from a cable amplifier like this? Anyone who is having difficulty receiving a solid and reliable cable TV or cable modem signal is a candidate for the BDA-S4. But first check with your cable company to make sure they have done all they can to get a high quality cable feed into your home, with high quality cables, splitters and connectors. If they've "been there, done that," and you still notice frequent outages of your cable internet service, or pixilated (distorted) images on live or recorded TV shows from cable, then you may very well need a drop amp like this one.

This four-output amplifier is particularly helpful if you are splitting a cable signal coming into your house to multiple rooms for multiple TV feeds (and this is perfectly legal to do, per the Cable Act of 1992). Whenever you split a cable signal, you lose approximately 3 dB (decibels) of signal strength. Split a signal enough times and it can cause you to lose your cable modem feed or get sporadic distortion on your digital cable channels. Insert a cable amplifier like this into your cable feed as close as possible to where it enters the home and it will boost the signal enough to survive multiple splits and, in most cases, will allow you to enjoy a glitch-free cable TV signal throughout your home as well as a solid high-speed internet connection.

Why is this amp's "two-way" or "bi-directional" capability important? A two-way amp/splitter with "return" feed support is necessary in order to properly support a broadband cable modem (for data upload and download) and to enable interactive cable services such as PPV (pay per view) and interactive guides. A one-way amplifier will boost overall signal reception, but it will not work with a modem or interactive cable services. The BDA-S4 works perfectly with both.

The BDA-S4 won't work miracles. Again, always check your incoming signal, cable and connector quality first. But if you've done all that and are still having trouble, this little cable signal amp can be a real life-saver. It also works fine for OTA (over the air) HDTV signal amplification but only if you have a decent signal to begin with. A full review of the Motorola Signal Booster is available on Big Picture Big Sound's web site. Our writer's cable reception in Manhattan went from spotty to near perfect with this simple little amp. Highly recommended.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a difference!, December 13, 2008

By	A. Miller (Columbus, OH) - See all my reviews

This dramatically improved the reception in my house. I have Insight Cable (Ohio) and have always had several snowy channels. The cable company had been out but said there was nothing they could do, as some channels just get poor reception. To make matters worse, I recently added five new splices for a total of 10. Several TV's had terrible reception. I chose this model so I could run the main cable input into the booster and then each output to a splitter. The main cable line enters the house into a finished office so I also liked how the unit was powered, too. It works absolutely fantastic. All TV's now have excellent reception. I just cannot believe that this solved my issues. It seems very well made and sturdy and it's actually pretty neat how it works. The power source is an inverter that translates the house electric to 12V. You plug it into your outlet and then run an R59 or R6 coaxial cable from the power source to the amplifier/booster. So I just fished a new cable line in the wall near my outlet to power it, as opposed to having to deal with installing a new outlet near my cable input. I have broadband internet coming through my cable and have seen no interference or problems with that. It was always pretty good so I'm unsure if there was any improvement. To me this was well worth the money. I have several LCD TV's around and it sucked to have spent the money on them but have bad reception.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Product !, October 27, 2008

By	Sig (Portland Or. USA) - See all my reviews

This product works great ! I had some channels that would pixel and some channels that would not come in with Comcast cable. This unit solved all of that. It also made my computer down load faster. On my Tivo it made the signal strength go from 70 to 100. On my computer the downstream power went from -13dbmv to +2dbmv. This was money very well spent.