I don't bother with the cable tv stuff because I've seen lots of quality issues. I have no confidence that there's anything useful inside the little box. Like I said in my previous post, I've cracked some of those things open and seen direct 't' connections between ports, resistors, etc. With strong tv signals, a consumer may never know the difference. I have a network analyzer and sweep everything I can get my hands on. You'd be surprised how much crap is being sold to consumers!
The various splitters all have different characteristics. The resistive splitter, for example, can be made VERY broadband (like DC to daylight) but the isolation is low, and it can be a bit lossier than, say, a hybrid splitter. A GOOD (emphasis added) hybrid splitter will provide lots of isolation between ports, but is more frequency limited. I've also found that there is some 'ripple' in the response of many hybrid splitters across their specified frequency range, so that isolation and insertion loss varies between bands.
The Wilkenson splitter is what you'll find in many commercial land mobile products. Example - Angle Linear receiver multicouplers use a series of Wilkenson splitters. Good performance and lots of isolation but for a specific band, ie 800 only. You'll also find narrow band stripline hybrid splitters.
I once bought some RG59 and a splitter at Radio Shack. Nothing worked! The 50' of RG59 had 20 db of loss at high band, I have no idea what it was they sold me. The splitter was 3 film resistors soldered to the F connectors inside the box. I don't shop there anymore.
I engineer any multicouplers I use... make sure they don't have excessive gain, just enough to overcome the loss of the splitter and to set the noise figure. I use N connectors or SMA. Splitters come from Minicircuits, preamps from them or RFBay, (or Angle Linear if it's going to live on a mountaintop. No overload, no intermod, no interaction between radios. =)
