Nasty cable interference


  #1  
Old 01-25-04, 09:06 PM
murderof1
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Nasty cable interference

I'm having a terrible time with my cable reception and trying to fix it myself. The cable co installed my cable by cutting the coax cable and ungrounding the aerial antenna and then only installed the cable on one tv. I have a splitter for the cable modem and tv and I then I dropped coax cable to two other splitters. The signal is fine for the converter that the cable company hooked up but the other two tvs are not. There are leading ghost pictures on channels 5 and 7 and vertical lines on the other VHF channels.

Also the channels start to show some snowy interference after channel 50 and horrible snow on the free channels that are intermixed with the pay channels. I can understand that I may need an amplifier, but my main priority is getting rid of the ghosting interference. I checked the cable and there is only one connection to the antenna, which was crystal clear before cable.
I have a RG 59/U cable attached to a RG 6/U cable, but that should be alright. My questions concern the antenna because I've tried several variations and I'm not familar with fixing one.

I'm not sure if I grounded the antenna correctly, maybe someone can help me confirm what I should do. I have tried disconnecting the antenna cable from the pre-laid cable, still there. I have reconnected the antenna cable to the current cabling system with an A/B switch, no help.
I've rechecked all F-connectors. The one thing I can think of is that when I reconnected the antenna cable that the female connector is susceptible to the outdoor elements.

Can anyone sort this out for me with suggestions?
 
  #2  
Old 01-26-04, 12:01 AM
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Your description is not clear at all. From what I can make out if you already have a splitter for you cable service between the cable modem and the TV and then you take the TV signal and split it again for even more TVs the two new signals will loose power. Everytime you split the signal the power of the two signals at the output will halve. You may need an amplifier also to make things work.

The "snow" could just be due to a weak signal - not due to interference. Weak signals can also cause the ghosting effect.

Can't understand the part about grounding. If you ground the input you won't get any signal. Maybe there is a terminology misunderstanding here.
 
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Old 01-26-04, 05:50 AM
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To add -

grounding will in no way change picture quality, grounded or not.

If your local TV stations and their respective cable channels are the same, ghosting can occur. You may get ota interference to the cable line. RG6 is preferred = more dielectric, more shielding, larger center conductor.
Amps may help, 10, 15, or maybe even 25dB

fred
 
  #4  
Old 01-26-04, 12:37 PM
murderof1
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You're right, they are the same channels... didn't think of that, but I thought the A/B switch would've stopped that or redirect that interference elsewhere.
 
 

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