Boosting/clearing up incoming signal (1 Viewer)

[JoeMc]

Came across this forum surfing for answers so I thought I would give it a try. The cable signal coming into my neighborhood is weak and the cable company says there is nothing they can do about it.
Here is the deal, I run a channel search on my HDTV, get all the channels. All is well for about 3 hours and forty minutes. After that, the TV forgets the channels. By forget, I change the channel, the TV goes to that channel showing a black screen, after about 10 seconds the channel changes to a much lower channel and shows the picture. The TV will not show the channel I want to watch. It makes no difference if the TV is on or not. I watch sports. At the end of the event, I have to run another channel search to watch TV.
My question is, is there a booster or filter or something I can install on the cable before it comes into my house to give me a better signal?

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

IMO, if the signal was really all that weak, the channel search function would find nothing to begin with. The fact that it will initially tune in channels, and then “loses” them, suggests to me that the TV is the problem, unless you’re getting this problem on every TV in the house.

Still, there are CATV signal boosters on the market if you want to try one.

When you lose the picture, can you dial in the desired channel number directly? If so what does that get you?

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[JoeMc]

1) Tried different TV's, different brands. Makes no difference.
2) Seeing if a booster would work.
3) "By forget, I change the channel, the TV goes to that channel showing a black screen, after about 10 seconds the channel changes to a much lower channel and shows the picture. The TV will not show the channel I want to watch." Makes no difference if I'm keying in channel number or using up/down channel button.

I know the signal is bad because the cable tech said so after hooking his meter up.

 

[JohnRice]

You can amplify the signal at the earliest point you have access to, which is typically where it comes out of the ground or where it enters the house, depending on the age of the house. You can us a "bullet" or in-line amp, which allows you to put the amp the first point you have access, with the power supply later in the line. You just can't have any splitters between the amp and power supply, unless they are two directional ones that pass the power back to the amp.

The problem is, if the signal coming into the house is bad or inconsistent enough, the amp may not fix the problem. It sounds like an intermittent problem, which the cable company should fix, but they are notorious for not doing anything about signal problems.

 

[JoeMc]

It took three months to get them to send someone to tell me the signal was bad.

I live in a mobile home and plan to rerun all the cable. Mainly due to finding a splitter under six inches of mud under the home while checking for bad connections, broken wires, etc. on my end. I have a 4-way, 5mhz - 2.4 ghz splitter that will replace two splitters under my home and one in it. The cable will be run from this splitter directly to where I need it. Just seeing what else I need to add since cable company will not.