IIRC, 70% is enough signal you should get a perfect picture (as good as
100% signal).10% is low and since these things are inconsistent will likely go too low at times. You'll get a blocky picture and bup-bup-bup audio (something I've seen WAY too much).
Do you realize this is making YOU look like a spammer?
I doubt that QS is much if any beter than the foil with the braid over it. Installing some of the rg59 (the type with just a braid and no foil) is not a very good idea. It can do two things, let the cable signal out so that it interfears with other services and lets other services interfear with your cable signal.
At one house I lived in I was getting some complaints from a house about 200 feet away that I was causing problems with a HBO channel. I was using a transmitter about 220 mhz and it was only 10 watts. It did not bother my cable. The cable man came out and found the home owner had used some single shielded cable and had to replace it.
I had signal problems - pixellation on DTV and slow internet. They replaced the last of the 60%? sheild with QS and all the problems dissapeared. The problems showed up when they switched all the TV channels to digital and boosted my internet speed. They said it's like trying to run gigabit ethernet on cat 3 cable. Sometimes it almost works- - - -.
foil and braid is what they installed. The installer called it QS cable. I had just called it full-sheild previously. I'll go look at the cable and see exactly what it says on it --- Some if FT4 and some is FT6.The FT6 is QS
Just checked the cable at the office - Rogers Business Internet - FT6 QS all the way. There had been a satelite TV system in the building before we moved in, and that was all FT6 QS cabling as well..
It's FT6 to the first splitter and to the cable modem. FT4 to the HD cable box and the DVR
ide antenna and the cable Internet for television. The question I have is when I put up an antenna can i just plug it into the coax cable coming into the house? I have my cable internet coming in on the same cable. Is this an issue or will it work.
You will have to separate the incoming cable for internet from your antenna . You can disconnect it a convenient outside point and then run a new wire from the cable company's wire directly to your cable modem. Then you can use your existing in-house wiring to run over the air tv by connecting your outside antenna to the now free entry point. Make sure all your tv's have the newer digital tuners in them as analog tv over the air is gone. Over the air is now all digital. Some cable providers were/are still delivering analog tv which worked with older tv's.
For what it's worth my daughter got only internet from time warner. But we put a splitter on it and she got a random selection of tv channels as well when we hooked a tv to it. Probably depends on the diligence of your inst aller to put the filters on the line. Which you can often just remove late r anyway.
we put > a splitter on it and she got a random selection of tv channels as well when we > hooked a tv to it. Probably depends on the diligence of you r installer to put > the filters on the line. Which you can often just rem ove later anyway.
Also what I have been suggesting!
There are several types of the rg6 cable. The QS has two braids and 2 foil coverages. The tri shield has a foil, braid and foil for the outer layers. Then some just has a foil and a braid over it. I have not looked but there is probably some around with just a braid like other cables, but I doubt it is. Usually you need differant type of connectors for each kind if it is done correctly.
There is not much if any differance in the loss of the QS vers the single foil/braid for quality cables. I doubt there is that much differance in the shielding either.
Like I said - FT4 and FT6
True. That's why I mentioned it and its center hole.
Yes, which is at ground potential, but electronics is complicated and maybe even the array of ground conductors in the average house somehow makes a decent antenna**.
Me too. But I've got nothing to lose by trying it, when I have time.
They used to advertise a lot, and sell, and I used to have a gizmo that was flatlead at one end, and screwed the the antenna terminals of a tv, and at the other end was a plastic box with a two prongs sticking out of the far end, to be plugged into an outlet (receptacle). I took it apart and there was a capacitor between one side of the flat lead and the neutral prong. The other side of the flat lead was not connected to anything. It worked as an antenna I guess, not great and certainly no better than rabbit ears (or what I usually used which is just one wire on one of the two tv screws.) The plastic box was 1/2" thick or so and 6-sided but not 6 equal sides, so it looked futuristic. That was most of its appeal to most people.
But if the neutral made a decent antenna, maybe the ground will too. No capacitor needed according to gf? maybe that's the difference between ground and neutral. :-) But I did ask about other parts.
You pay $5/month for Comcast internet, and that's your whole cost???
Plust the one-time-only $10 No-TV fee?
Did you have to buy a cable modem maybe?
I know you don't have TV anymore, and I don't think Comcast has telephone.
Thanks.
When dealing with RF there is not much of a real ground on a wire more than a few feet long. Depending on the frequency for the length of wire, but where the TV stations operate it only takes a few inches of wire to put you above ground, so to speak. It will be a ground at direct current and low frequencies such as 60 HZ.
If you really want to get some bang for your OTA buck, about $35 at Amazon gets you one of these.
Mediasonic HW-150PVR HomeWorx ATSC Digital TV Converter Box with Media Player and Recording PVR Function/HDMI Out
I've ordered one for every large screen TV in the house. It receives free OTA HD TV broadcasts via a *good* HDTV antenna and allows you to store them to any sort of USB drive (I've tried thumb drives, 500GB WD and 2 TB Seagate external devices so far). The recordings are in HD as MKS files and I can take the thumb drive out of the mediasonic unit, plug it into my Sony BluRay's USB front port and play whatever I just recorded in very nice looking 1080 resolution. I wish that the unit took the file names it recorded from the EPG like the Panasonic DVR did (before the digital conversion - afterwards nada). It instead records the channel name and number along with the time and date, which is enough to distinguish recorders.
In terms of bang for the buck and the number of problems solved for so little, I think this may be the "Most Useful Purchase" of the year. I've tried recording HD-TV to PCs and while it can be done, it's nowhere near as convenient or cheap as using a PVR. The recordings are stunning - particular compared to my old Panasonic and Polaroid DVRs which had a HQ mode but nowhere near as sharp as the Mediasonic's HD recordings.
It's got an HDMI, component and composite outputsIt's got an EPG and timed recording, too. Some people report issues with that which oddly seem to be caused by local TV stations setting their time signal incorrectly, which the Mediasonic depends on for timer recordings. Haven't found a way to tell it to stop recording after an hour, but it might be possible - it's just not obvious (on the Panny you just hit record again to add another 30 minutes of recording time.
Now, when there's four different things on at the same time that I want to record (it's happened!) I can just set each box to a different OTA channel and have at it. Allegedly there's a FW upgrade that lets the unit decode QAM, but I think I've decided that with Netflix, Amazon Prime and OTA in the DC area, who the fu& needs Comcast CATV? I only subscribe to the basic package which means local channels (fewer than the new box gets!!!), CSpan, WGN and the local public access channels.
While there are clearly "settling in" issues with the firmware and the hardware, I don't think I've ever seen an HDTV recorder for OTA broadcasts for anywhere remotely as cheap as $40 and I've made enough manual one hour records to different kinds of media that even if that's all it ever does and the timer recordings never work, it's still worth the money. Plays all the files from my other DVRs, too.
I'll post updates as I discover new features (or bugs) but so far, what a great Easter gift to myself! My wife is not as impressed, I'm afraid, because she's finally figured out how to use the current setup and fears that will be changed.
Micky,
No, my bill "went down" about $5 when I dropped the TV service. I still pay about $67 a month for internet service.
The no-TV fee is monthly, not one time.
Basically, it was $12 a month to add TV service, or a $10 monthly fee if I only wanted internet. I always opted for the TV service until they changed to encrypted digital. That required new boxes that were incompatible with my TV tuners. So, I now pay the $10 monthly fee, and use an antenna to get the local TV channels.
I purchased my own cable modem a few years ago to avoid the rental cost every month. The monthly rental was only $5 or so, but if you plan to have cable internet for more than a year or so, it's more cost effective to buy your own modem.
Comcast does offer phone service, but I get phone service a lot cheaper by going through 1-VOIP:
Anthony Watson
[...]
Was very interested to read this reference. Went to the Web site, but did not get enough information on blocking these ****ing anonymous robot calls that I get all day.
Thanks for any help.
HB
Wow, that is what you said. I wonder if there is anything called adult-onset dsylexia.
I figured, but I was trying to make the numbers come out right. I
*thought* it was too good to be true.I can see that.
That sounds very interesting.
Thanks.
Higgs,
Yes, 1-Voip has anonymous call blocking, white listing, black listing, and call filtering. I think that's fairly standard for most Voip providers.
However, you may want to register with the National Do Not Call Registry:
I don't use any of the blocking features on 1-Voip and we almost never get junk mail calls.
I have used 1-Voip since 2007. They were called "Voip Your Life" back then.
Before that I used another Voip provider (don't recall the name), but they went out of business.
On a couple of very rare occasions (once every 2-3 years maybe), my home network acted up and I couldn't receive phone calls. Once I knew about it, it was easy to power everything down and reboot the network. However, that's more of a problem with my own network than an issue with the service they provide.
Last year I had a problem with my home phone wiring, and it appeared as a phone off the hook to 1-Voip. After a couple days they blocked my service till I fixed it and contacted them. Again, that was an issue with my own wiring, not really their fault. These days, I just plug a wireless phone system into the phone adapter and skip the house wiring completely.
Otherwise, I have been very happy with their service. Back in the 90's we were paying over $100 for a basic land line through Verizon. That was bare bones basic with no caller ID or blocking features. Switching to Voip phone service dropped our bill to $20 a month and we get a lot more features. As long as you have a broadband internet connection, Voip is the way to go (We can't get cell reception out here).
Nope, they were just the least expensive phone service I could find at the time. :)
The contact page on their web site says they're in Oklahoma?
Golly, I have no idea. Doesn't matter to me.
Anthony Watson
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