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Believe it or not, most of the loss in coax cable is from the resistance of the cable. Mainly the resistance of the center conductor of the cable. This resistive loss is AC resistance caused by skin effect, which is greater than the DC resistance of the wire. The higher the frequency the greater this loss becomes. There is also some dielectric loss that comes from the type of insulation between the center conductor and the shield. Loss from signal leakage is very small and mostly negligible. Running multiple home runs or a single line with multiple taps will net you the same amount of loss depending on how many splitters you use. Each time you split in two you loose half the signal power. If you have 4 TV sets and you run home runs to each you need to split the incoming signal with a 4 way splitter. That leaves you with � the signal power to deliver to each set plus the loss in each cable. If you run one cable and use splitters near the TV sets you will wind up with the same amount of total loss. You will need 3 each of the two way splitters in order to run 4 sets. Each of the outlets will result in a signal level that is � of the original signal level. So it really doesn�t matter, as far as signal loss goes, where you do the power dividing. With this type of system some of the sets may get more signal than others that are farther down the line but the farthest one away will still have the same amount of signal as you would get with a home run type setup. A home run system might be easier to amplify if that is needed as you can do it all at one place. Do what is easiest to do. The performance will be the same. Best Regards
Gary
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