Repair-It

This keeps getting better by the week. I suspect my house had a weak cable signal due to my inability to pick up some channels in one room so I installed a signal booster I bought on Amazon for $32: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001EK ... UTF8&psc=1

After using the signal booster, my reception is improved. The next step would be to rewire, but I am not sure if it's worth it. Also, it appears the internet is performing a bit better now too. I was able to stream the entire Patriots/Bills game last Sunday at the highest quality (4500 kbps) without so much as a hiccup. When I walked upstairs I discovered my wife was also streaming one of her shows on Amazon Prime for most of the time.

Rewiring could be beneficial. You'd probably be well served to have the cable company survey to ensure the signal strength at your house is adequate. Then you know rewiring is all you need (better coax with good ends, fewer splitters, etc.). You shouldn't need any kind of booster. By the way, the only thing that booster can do is boost the signal available TO IT, to mitigate downstream attenuation. It cannot under any circumstances change the signal to noise ratio that enters it (it raises everything, including the noise floor). In fact, the SNR gets worse but that loss may be better (and demonstrably is) than the attenuation suffered from however many splitters, bad ends, etc. you may have.

Time for broadcast? Going on 5 years without cable here...

I installed the booster at the box coming into the house because I wanted to boost the best signal possible. I wasn't able to get NBC in HD before the booster and now it works great. I think I could still benefit from a rewire, but for now it's probably good enough.

Yeah it might be. But that situation isn't normal at all. If the booster is successfully compensating for crappy wiring, then ok. But you shouldn't need it. And I worry about your internet connection speeds (it will literally keep me up tonight). What do you get from a speedtest (preferably on a computer wired with Ethernet, if you have such an ungainly appliance)?

I speedtest often via wifi. Right now I am getting 14.5 mbps down. I have seen as bad as like 6 or 7 before the booster and as good as 20. I still think the internet speeds can be somewhat inconsistent, but I am not sure if that's all my wiring or what. I would like to install a shorter new wire and connect that to the cable modem to see if it helps anything. Right now the wire going to the modem goes around about 2/3 of the outside of the house and gets split once.

What you have right there is a first world problem. Your house is so big that your wiring is causing significant attenuation and thus resulting in your broadband internet speeds sometimes falling to 5Mbps. Which is impacting your streaming video. That's awesome.

Right now the wire going to the modem goes around about 2/3 of the outside of the house and gets split once.

And now the part where I try helping again.

That sounds like a long run but not much splitting. The booster is doing its job given your situation.

Now if I could only solve one of my other first world problems: having a wifi router with sufficient coverage for the entire house and some of the yard and garage.

Probably will need a repeater. Wired is best but you can do wireless. Also, not all routers are created equal with regard to signal range (transmit power).