Cable TV Signal Quality

[orangetrader]

I have a cable line that comes into the house and then in the attic splits into 4 lines. One to living one to den one to two of the bedrooms. When I watch TV some channels are crsip clear but a few are fuzzy and poor. The weird thing is it's not always the same channels.

For example, the SciFi channel is terrible on all the TVs and channel 6 is good on all TVs. But channel 4 is just OK on two TVs but terrible (with ghost shadows on the other two), while TBS is good only on three TVs and bad on one.

All the lines are the same line (installed by my electrician) and roughly the same length from the splitter to the outlet. I bought a $30 signal booster from Radio Shack and use the splitter on that, but the quality did not improve.

Any idea what I can do to improve the situation?

Thanks in advance,

O

[Dave]

Unhook all but the lines that are used, so you don't split signal along wire that doesn't need it. Tighten all connectors, and consider replacing connections that are suspect -- loose connections are a common problem.

Dave

[HA HA Budys Here]

-Check the quality of the actual coxial cable. Is it RG-6 or RG-59? If it's 59, consider replacing the coaxial cables with the better grade RG-6.

-Check every connector.

-Check the outdoor connection where the cable from the street meets the cable from the house. (POE. point of entry) Is that connection corroded?

-If all else fails, call the cable company to investigate. Twice my cable company has had to replace their arial splitter because the guts had corroded due to water infiltration.

-Check the ground wire from the

[Pop]

I did everything everyone here suggested even had the cable co. come out and mess with it & still had the problem you had.

Finally said screw it and went with Sat TV. Problem solved and I'm saving money to boot :)

[I-zheet M'drurz]

LMAO! YES, YES, YES!!!! Welcome to the club, brother! You have finally discovered the secret, you know why people are RUNNING away from cable.

[Minnie Bannister]

Simply unhooking wires from a splitter won't increase the signal going to the remaining cable(s), especially if you don't replace the unhooked cables by terminator caps.

The question is whether there is an adequate signal (both level and quality) going into the splitter, so try replacing the splitter by a coupler to just one of those cables and check the picture on that TV.

Did the picture quality suddenly take a nosedive? Splitters come in various qualities: some are OK for regular TV (from an antenna) but not for cable signals. The cable company's installation may have a problem: bad splitter or amp. out on a pole or underground somewhere.

Are your neighbors having the same problem?

When we had cable at our previous house we had multiple splits with no problems.

MB

On 09/25/04 02:17 am Dave put fingers to keyboard and launched the following message into cyberspace:

[I-zheet M'drurz]

FYI, that doesn't do anything to send more signal to the other port, it just keeps it from radiating. A 2-way splitter is still -3.5 dB on both legs, be they connected to cable, terminators, or your Uncle Joe's wooden leg (non-conductive ).

Yep.

And some are for cable, but they're not full bandwidth. No differnece in looks betwen one that only goes out to 300 MHz or one that is good to 1 GHz, except for the fine print right on the device which should tell you the specs.

Good advice. Troubleshoot = Isolate. Eliminate, swap, track your results, follow the problem. It will eventually point to the culprit.

[twfsa]

Easy fix go to radio shack, install a signal amphilifer, I have 7 sets in my home the picture was fuzzy, installed the amp, crystal clear, a good amp about $30.

Tom

[SQLit]

Did you put the booster before the splitter?

[Daniel L. Belton]

This doesn't always work. A signal amplifier will also amplify noise on the line if the noise is being introduced before the amplifier.

You need to make sure you have a clean signal at the point you put the amplifier for it to do you any good.

[JerryL]

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For five years everyone in my community has complained to Adelphia about weak reception, snow, etc. Their answer was to send a tech out and install amplifiers in everyones house. In some cases it helped, in others it didn't. When I was having a problem with my cable internet connection (Powerlink) the tech tipped me off that the real problem is a weak signal coming into the community. I registered a severe complaint to Adlephia which resulted in them sending a crew down to check the signals and they confirmed there was a major problem. After 5 years of complaining they finally replaced the underground cabling in our community and the signals and reception are fine now. Now if we can figure a way to stop these damn hurricanes we're getting battered with...............

[toller]

I have the same problem; I can actually get different channels on my TV and VCR.

I figure it is the tuner. They must handle weak signals a little differently.

[Jeff Wisnia]

I'll second that one! When we switched our Comcast cable service over to "digital" to get more channels and features last year I had to toss out the old Rat Shack 300 MHz distribution amplifier which had served us well for over 15 years. The new 900 MHz amp only cost about $30 (again at Rat Shack) and now Bob's your uncle, even though our house is wired with only RG-59U cable, which was the standard when we built the place.

Jeff

[curmudgeon]

Read the post numb nuts...he already did that!!

[Edwin Pawlowski]

I had a similar problem. Tried a lot of fixes and nothing seemed to work. Called the cable company. They replaced a connector on the pole and it has been perfect ever since.

[orangetrader]

Yes. The amplifier has a built in splitter. I used that.

O

[orangetrader]

If the problem is with the cable company's end, wouldn't it not affect all channels? In my case only certain channels are fuzzy.

O

[Edwin Pawlowski]

As I said, I had the SAME problem. Different channels are on different frequencies an only certain channels may be affected. Not every set was affected the same way.

You can try lots of different things (I did also) and you may find it. Or you can try and try and find nothing. The cable company does not charge to check it out or to fix their problem.