Humming from CATV hooked up to my computer (1 Viewer)

[norman_maclean]

I have a hum from all speakers and some vertical lines on the tv that go up when I hook my computer up to my reciever. I have a tv card in my computer. If I unhook the cable tv from the wall coming into the house it gets rid of the hum.

I am assuming I have a ground loop problem, and have searched for 'ground loop', 'isolator' etc and have not seen a product to help me.

I remember someone posting a link to something they said worked for them way back and it was like under $10. I searched to try and find this post to no avail.

Anyone know what would be best for this?

Also, does anyone know if having this cable hooked up to my computer without some sort of surge protection on the cable could somehow fry my computer with say lighthing etc if the grounding isn't proper in my house?

Thanks

 

[JeremyFr]

I to have experienced this problem....funny thing is I work for Comcast (formerly AT&T Broadband) in the Seattle area. I was never able to figure out why it did this except for that most cable has an eletrical charge due to amplification etc that occurs in its tranmission from the local neigborhood node where it makes its fiber connection to the cable headend. I never found a solution to the problem aside from unhooking on when I wanted to use the other. The interesting thing I noticed was that it produced his effect no matter how it was connected, whether through an AV Reciever, directly to the TV etc even when the reciever was on a completely different source I still had this going on. I imagine it is probably not good on any of the equipment either, the problem I see with it being a ground loop issue is that most HT equipment is only 2 pin power lacking the 3rd ground pin yet the computer is a grounded device I spoke with my father on this issue as he is an eletrician and even he was stumped as to what could cause it or how to filter it out. Sorry I couldn't be more help but at least you know you're not alone in this stumping delema.

 

[JeremyFr]

Double posted on accident can someone please delete this post thank you.

 

[VikP]

I've used the following on my system and it completely eliminated the Ground Loop hum:
http://shop.polkaudio.com/customer/p...8&cat=6&page=1

You might be able to find it somewhere else on the net for cheaper.

 

[TimForman]

Interesting how those CATV boxes from Seattle services hum. I used a cheater plug on mine and it went away. I found a more permanent solution when I switched to satellite TV.

 

[JeremyFr]

Interesting how those CATV boxes from Seattle services hum. I used a cheater plug on mine and it went away. I found a more permanent solution when I switched to satellite TV.

We actually found the reason for the hum in another thread I'll share here. Basically its because the cable TV is not grounded to the same ground as the house electrical. So when you connect a grounded piece of equipment to anything connected to the CATV box it creates a ground loop between the 2 ground points. I forwarded this info on to my head supervisor here at Comcast (formerly AT&T Broadband) so that we can start a process to change the procedure of how they ground the cable service at the home.