[mythtv-users] Using Cable-tv certain channels fuzzy

[Brian Wood]

On Jul 3, 2006, at 8:12 PM, John T. Nissley wrote:

>
> I hate to state the obvious but have you tried to connect a regular  
> TV to the cable that is connected to your PVR card?  This way you  
> will be able to tell if the signal going into the PVR card is  
> actually any good.  I had a cable guy tell me for two months that  
> the cable was fine even though I had a snowy picture.  I switched  
> to satellite and kept the same TV and now my picture is crystal clear.

Cable techs are often put in a bad position. It's common for a system  
to simply not have enough signal capacity to give a subscriber what  
they need for a clear picture.

Especially in situations where single-family homes have been split up  
into apartments, or people are renting out their basements or in  
other conditions where the original calculations of number of  
subscribers per mile have been rendered inaccurate, always in the  
direction of more subscribers, the capacity just doesn't exist to  
supply the required signal.

Customers also tend to have more TV sets than they used to, and cable  
modems were not even considered in the original engineering.

Very few multi-family homes are changed back to single family, and  
few families whose children have sets in their bedrooms take them  
away, so the trend is always working against the cable system.

Some will say they should just add amplifiers, but there are serious  
limits to how many you can cascade and still meet spec. Solving a  
noise problem with amplification will usually result in a composite- 
triple-beat problem, and amplifiers have to be powered somehow, and  
modern push-pull amplifiers draw double what the original single- 
ended ones do.

(cable amps are powered by 60 volts AC that's run down the same coax  
as the signal (square-wave to get more average power within the  
allowed voltage), a by-product of this is discouraging unauthorized  
"tapping" of trunk lines :-)).

Even with a decent budget it can be hard to meet needs without a  
complete re-engineering of the plant, with resultant down time and  
inconvenience to subscribers.

So what does the tech tell you? He can't just tell the truth, most  
customers wouldn't understand it, and wouldn't really care in any  
case. I think in John's case he made the best move, to satellite.

With satellite and IP-delivered options these days, I wouldn't want  
to be a cable operator :-)
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