cable outlet not providing signal?

somewhere there is a splitter that takes the outside signal & sends it to inside outlets.

If you're lucky the wires will be labeled. But if not, find the wires that aren't connected & try each one.

If its not hooked up what would that mean? Would they have to run a freaking cable all through the walls to that outlet? I assume if the outlet is there they ran cable to it.

Where would it be "unhooked"? In the attic?

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If its not hooked up what would that mean? Would they have to run a freaking cable all through the walls to that outlet? I assume if the outlet is there they ran cable to it.

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I expect they did.

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Where would it be "unhooked"? In the attic?

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Well yeah. In my attic, all the cables for the outlets converge at a single point, and they're connected to the main line into the house at that point with a splitter. If you have a two-way, the loss is 3.5 dB on each leg or half the power, a four-way would be a 7 dB loss on each leg, etc. Using smaller splitters means you degrade the signal power less. If you had so many lines the signal would be diminished to the point where it's out of spec, you'd have to add an amp, which you always want to avoid if possible.

It's just a possibility.

First off, I see you mentioned DirecTV, and I believe they use higher frequency parts than cable, and I am out of my depth there.

OTOH, if you're using Cox cable or similar, I would get this Regal splitter:

LINK

Cable companies use them, and they're considered excellent quality. Best of all, they're inexpensive. I see a bunch available on eBay. They are what I use.

Spec-wise, you need a 1 GHz splitter for digital cable.

Since you have a cable modem currently on the 3-way, it's probably getting the "good" leg of the typical unbalanced 3-way splitter. (The legs are labeled with the loss, so you can tell.) That is, if it was installed right, it's getting the -3.5 dB leg while the TVs are getting the -7 dB legs. Now if you go to a 4-way, the cable modem will be getting -7 dB loss, too, so before you do that, check the signal strength. If it's greater than -5 dB or so, I can't foresee any problem even if it's currently getting the minimum possible splitter signal loss of -3.5 dB. The 4-way would then take it down to -8.5 dB, and I think Cox wants the downstream cable modem signal to be between -10 and +10 dB. If the signal is close to those limits already, you might need to look at it a little closer. It can vary throughout the day with outside temperature, so that's something to consider as well.