Cable Company Stupidity

[Taddeusz]

Just bought a house a couple months ago and have been having poor cable signal problems with my SageTV ever since.

Today I decided to order a tool so that I could get to my cable amp outside in order to hook up another connection because I was getting such a poor signal on that leg. My cable modem and tuners for SageTV are all on a single 4-way splitter. My cable modem was reporting a -11dbm downstream signal and I've been fighting with poor signal quality on certain channels on my HDHR.

Well, tonight I got home and decided to go out and take another look at the box. I discovered that the box had apparently been forced open at some point before we had bought the house and the cable guy had just zip tied the box shut.

So, what I found inside just boggled my mind a little bit. Before the cable amp was a splitter called a "digital tap" but according to the specs it seems like it's just a 1000Mhz splitter. This "digital tap" was what was feeding my cable modem and tuners and the input to the cable amp. So I was already getting a halved signal into my 4-way splitter and amp.

I did what any techie would do and removed the splitter, put the incoming cable directly into the amp, and connected that leg to one of the amp's outputs. Now my cable modem is reporting +3dbm signal and my HDHR is getting almost 100% signal quality.

I'm still going to keep the order for the tool as they put a lock on one of the amp's outputs. I figure if it's attached to my house I should be able to get into it to be able to add more lines to the cable service I'm fully paying for. I just don't want to have to pay them to come out and do all that for me when I can do it myself for free. But I'll keep the lock on there until I need another output to keep my neighbors from stealing my cable.

I'm much happier now!

[Taddeusz]

Ok, now that I understand the difference between a tap and a splitter a little bit more and then also realized the actual reason for the tap I'm not actually as ticked off now. I'm still quite happy with the change though.

The real reason for the tap was so if the power went out my cable phone service would still be working because it wasn't going through the amp. I could actually remedy that pretty easily by putting the amp on a UPS. That wouldn't be difficult at all. Losing phone service during power outages doesn't actually bother me that much since there are three cell phones in the house. The only reason I signed up for the phone service to begin with was because I could get free installation at the new house. Otherwise I would have had to pay for installation to keep my service as-is without the phone.

I'm also pretty sure the cable guy didn't expect me to be hanging a 4-way splitter off of that tap. And of course he didn't tell me how he'd hooked everything up. I was under the assumption that everything was running through the amp. Shame on me for that.

Now I'm still a bit puzzled. Cox Cable has WGN HD in the clear. On my HDHR tuner 0 receives that channel fine. Tuner 1, which SageTV always picks first, has issues with it and drops out quite a lot. Not sure what's going on there as the signal is now quite good.

[matt91]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

Now I'm still a bit puzzled. Cox Cable has WGN HD in the clear. On my HDHR tuner 0 receives that channel fine. Tuner 1, which SageTV always picks first, has issues with it and drops out quite a lot. Not sure what's going on there as the signal is now quite good.

I'd start by just swapping the input lines to the HDHR and see what happens. Perhaps it's a line issue - you'll know if all of a sudden Tuner 0 has problems, but Tuner 1 is good.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by matt91

I'd start by just swapping the input lines to the HDHR and see what happens. Perhaps it's a line issue - you'll know if all of a sudden Tuner 0 has problems, but Tuner 1 is good.

Yea, I plan on doing that when I get home from work this evening. I hope it's not something wrong with my HDHR. Money is kind of tight right now. As an interim solution I could probably adjust the tuner merits so that Tuner 0 gets chosen by default. It's always puzzled me that Tuner 1 gets picked first.

[reggie14]

I have a similar story. Mine might be a bit worse. When Comcast came to my place for installation, I asked them for 4 way splitter to replace one of my old ones that wasn't very good quality. I've asked for these before, and the technicians have always been happy to oblige. But, this guy got really suspicious, first claiming I wasn't allowed to split my cable that way, then saying he wasn't allowed to give splitters out.

After talking to him for a while about my setup and why I wanted to have a bunch of different lines in one spot he got pretty interested in my setup. He even asked me for more information about how to set up a PC-based DVR and HTPC (and I gave him the address for these forums). But he was still suspicious. So, when he installed the cable modem and hooked up the cable box he T-ed off the coax cable coming into the house. One line was split into two again, one going to the cable modem, the other going to the box. The other line coming off of the original cable was open for me to use as I pleased.

I argued with him for a while about things, but eventually decided to just give up. I thought it would be easier to just reconfigure everything after he left. But, as soon as he left I noticed he put locks on everything so I can't get rid of his two splitters.

Maybe one of these days I'll order a tool to unscrew the cables, but everything seems to working OK right now so I'm not going to worry about it too much. It's kind of annoying though.

[Taddeusz]

The tool is actually pretty cheap. Not a bad idea to have one if you're a home owner and subscribe to cable service.

Other than the lock that's on the other leg of the amp the other reason to keep my order for the tool is if Cox Cable ever decides they want to replace my termination box since it's previously been busted open.

The guy that came out didn't even put a security tag on it. It was just held together with a zip tie. I was rather pleased and amused when I noticed it.

But just know when you do have the occasion to reconfigure your cable lines the tool is actually pretty cheap.

[Thomas Wischgol]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

Yea, I plan on doing that when I get home from work this evening. I hope it's not something wrong with my HDHR. Money is kind of tight right now. As an interim solution I could probably adjust the tuner merits so that Tuner 0 gets chosen by default. It's always puzzled me that Tuner 1 gets picked first.

I think SageTV just allocates the tuners in the order they show up in the setup listing. Instead of messing with the merits, you could also create a copy of the lineup and disable this one channel for that specific tuner that has problems with it. This way, SageTV knows to use the other tuner if it needs to record that channel and the other one for anything else.

Thomas

[stevech]

On splitters in your coax...
I live in a townhouse. After years of arguing with TIme Warner, it turned out that my home's coax passed through the attics of adjacent townhomes - where each residence has a home-run coax (old RG59). In one residence, there was a 4 way splitter on my coax, installed many years ago, by someone naive, as the coaxes aren't marked as to which goes where. That gone, my home's signals are far better.

Re amps, of course, be sure it passes a return uplink signal, for cable modems and set top boxes.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by stevech

On splitters in your coax...
I live in a townhouse. After years of arguing with TIme Warner, it turned out that my home's coax passed through the attics of adjacent townhomes - where each residence has a home-run coax (old RG59). In one residence, there was a 4 way splitter on my coax, installed many years ago, by someone naive, as the coaxes aren't marked as to which goes where. That gone, my home's signals are far better.

Re amps, of course, be sure it passes a return uplink signal, for cable modems and set top boxes.

Yea, I may have to switch out the cable company's amp for my own just to see how it works.

What should have been done in that town house was to run taps rather than splitters. Taps are different than splitters. They are used for trunking cable TV to different locations while splitters are more dead end devices. If they really were splitters rather than taps whoever installed them wasn't very smart.

[Taddeusz]

I know other SageTV users experience this more often but this is the first time for me. I had a couple failed recordings Saturday because Cox Cable decided to move WGNHD, which I recieve in the clear, from channel 133 to 131. I'm not sure why they did it. But the result was that Legend of the Seeker failed to record for the kid.

On a side note it annoys me that both the local CW and Fox affiliates here in OKC apparently don't have the equipment to show syndicated content in HD. Both channels show Legend of the Seeker pillarboxed. Other than an illegal download WGNHD is the only way I can get an actual HD recording of the show. Just a tad annoying. I'm sure they'll eventually get the proper equipment. It took all the local affiliates too long to buy HD overlay equipment.

[CollinR]

If you hadn't noticed they seem to give you 2 free channels in the clear each month but also swap up which 2 they are however often they are on the same channel. Thats how they do it where I am in Tulsa anyway.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by CollinR

If you hadn't noticed they seem to give you 2 free channels in the clear each month but also swap up which 2 they are however often they are on the same channel. Thats how they do it where I am in Tulsa anyway.

I haven't noticed anything like that here. The available clear QAM channels here are fairly consistent. What does come and go are the on-demand programs which people are watching at any given time.

[stevech]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

What should have been done in that town house was to run taps rather than splitters.

No, each townhome has its own dedicated home-run coax to the demarcation. Four townhomes per group. So one townhome has three coaxes passing through. Next one has two, etc. No taps or splitters are supposed to be in the lines. But in my case, one was mistakenly installed.