Question about RCA splitters

[DanteFox]

Is there a set "direction" that they are built to work in? Just wondering because I'm thinking of buying a recording setup, and of course I'll need some splitters. I'm looking on amazon and I know I need one two females and one male ideally. the wii cables would be plugged into one of the females, the male would go into the tv and the recording device would be extended using an RCA cable so it'd go into the other female. I'm kinda worried that it might not work though. What if it's designed so that the male part is the input and the two females are meant to be outputs?

tl;dr: do rca splitters have a set "direction" that the input and output need to go in or can they be switched around?

 

[ajp_anton]

There is no "direction", they are just a single wire (+ ground) that connect two devices.

 

[EPsilon933]

ajp got it

 

[DanteFox]

There is no "direction", they are just a single wire (+ ground) that connect two devices.

Except they connect three devices but yeah I'll take your word for it.

 

[ajp_anton]

It's still just a wire (+ ground) that connect three devices =)
No matter how you connect them, the result will be the same. Each device has just one signal pin. You connect these.
Had there been multiple pins, some for input and some for output, direction may have mattered. But in a single wire, electric fields will travel both directions.

 

[CT Chia]

Does anyone know what causes problems like brightness decrease through splitters? I know better quality splitters don't do it as much, so what kind of connector(s) do better?

 

[ajp_anton]

Passive splitters (aka just splitting the signal) does that. Some cheap tuners seem to drop the overall voltage, causing the brightness to drop in every other device in the chain too. At least that's my theory of what's happening =).

To fix this, either get good quality tuners, or get an active splitter (one that needs external power).

 

[CT Chia]

Does anyone know where to buy a good splitter with external power? Preferably one that can split a single source into like 3-4 outputs? I've seen them before but don't know where to buy them for a good price.