[Paul_III]

As part of my new HT I bought a $50 Tripplite surge protector to run my HT through. Well, after installing it we could no longer receive our HBO HD feed from our local cable company. After a lot of troubleshooting, the cable guy unplugged the coax from my surge protector and plugged it directly into the TV. Now we can get the HBO HD channel fine (for some reason all other channels including two other HD channels worked fine, only the HBO was messed up). I'm wondering if this is:

1) A common problem (although I guess a lot of people don't have HD yet)

2) A bad surge protector?

3) A bad idea to allow the coax to go directly to the TV without being protected?

Any opinions and/or experiences would be greatly appreciated.

[Paul_III]

Oops, I should also add that the "grounded" light does not shine when I took the coax out of the "cable in" port. That does worry me.

[Chu Gai]

the no light i would think is either an issue with the protector or the outlet. to check the outlet, you can always go to home depot and they've got a $4 outlet tester. it's located in the electrical area and is self explanatory. if it's a problem with the outlet, fix it. then you can always try the protector again. was the surge protector before, or after the cable box?

[Paul_III]

The surge protector was after the cable box. On my old roommate's setup it worked fine, of course he had his own surge protector. And I just checked, if I plug the coax "in" back into the surge protector, the "ground" light comes back on. Hmmmm.

Edit: OK, now I just unplugged both coaxs (the in and out), turned off and turned on the surge protector, and then reconnected the coax through the surge protector and Voila, now the HBO HD signal comes through fine even though it wasn't working before. Weird, huh?

[Chu Gai]

yes it's weird but it could be an issue with the outlet itself and perhaps the surge protector, not seeing a valid ground, leaves the circuits open therebye protecting everyting. maybe?

[JeremyFr]

sounds as though your electrical ground is bad but since the cable is grounded independently the surge protector is using it as a main ground which would kind of worry me.