I know what you’re thinking — why is a blog dedicated to selling antennas telling me not to buy one of their most expensive devices? It’s simple. The Televes Smartkom is a great device. It does let you connect multiple antennas and gives you one output. So in that sense you could call it a “combiner.” But it’s a lot more accurate to call it a “smart amplifier.” Honestly we keep the word “combiner” in the description in order to help people find it. People do tend to search for that word when they’re looking to use multiple antennas.
Getting in a little deeper
What you see above is a combiner. I know it says “splitter.” That’s because splitters and combiners are, at heart, the same thing. A typical splitter can be used to combine signals because all the pathways go to the same point. If you want to learn a whole lot more on this subject, here’s an article you might like.
The point is that a combiner is a very simple thing. More than one thing goes into it, and it very passively combines all the inputs into one output. In fact, the best combiners are almost always the cheapest splitters. More expensive splitters use extra circuitry that just gets in the way of combining.
So what’s the Smartkom, then?
The Televes SmartKom gives you the ability to connect up to three antennas and bring their signals in on a single wire. But what it does is so much more complex. (Here’s a whole review of the SmartKom and how to use it.)
The SmartKom doesn’t combine signals. Technically, if you are combining two signals, what you get is a signal level that equals the total of all the signal coming in, minus a little bit of loss because of the wiring and such. The SmartKom looks at all the signals coming in from multiple antennas and chooses the strongest one for each channel. It can do this automatically or you can use an app to do it manually. It then applies the most possible amplification to each channel individually. Finally it’s all normalized and sent down a single wire. The result is usually better than passively combining antennas.
Use a SmartKom for what it does best
SmartKom is an awesome tool for working with different kinds of antennas pointed in different directions. It’s not the right tool for people who want to take two antennas, point them in the same direction, and get twice the reception. There are much less expensive tools that do that task very well. On the other hand, the SmartKom does its job very well. It’s part of the Televes ecosystem, and you can find it and other great Televes antennas when you shop at SolidSignal.com. If you need help on anything from finding the right product to help activating your TV or cellular services, call us! We’re here for you during East Coast business hours at 888-233-7563. If it’s after hours, fill out the form below. We’ll get right back to you!
