sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Cabling Telephones Systems Wiring CATV Help!

I am at my whits end. I am having trouble with a project which my company installed the RG6 CATV cabling. We are getting numerous problems with the picture, how do I put this, having glitches on the screen. Most of the picture is good but in places it is slow to react. I am not sure if this is a good explaination but I am not sure how else to describe it. We have tightend all connections and in some cases completely replaced the cable with no resolve. The provider points the finger at our installation but I cannot find an answer. If someone is in the Gainseville Fl. area I would be willing to pay them to fix this problem. All suggestions would be appreciated.

Desperate

I think you just found out the hard way that CATV is not something most contractors should play with. It's not like the old days where you could throw some cable in and a bunch of splitters and if you got a picture pat yourself on the back.

The "provider" (the cable company) should be the ones to point you in the right direction as to recommending a sub contractor to clean up whatever you did.

I ALWAYS recommend that any contractor wanting to do CATV limit themselves to installing the wiring. It must be all home runs back to a central location. That's all you do, DO NOT install any fittings, splitters or anything else. Leave the design to the cable company.

-Hal

Thanks Hal.I am finding this out. You seem to be the brains behind most of the answers and a good source for information. I am referring this to the provider in hopes they can narrow down the trouble. This system we install has been engineered by a company that specializes in this sort of things but this site is going to be the death of me. Thanks again for your help.
Gregg

Fair enough. Now somebody who knows CATV is going to have to come in with test equipment, look at what you have done, check levels and BER/MER and find the problems.

You don't say how complex, extensive or anything about this installation so it may be as simple as new fittings and re-doing the distribution, maybe doing something different with the feed from the tap. Then again if there is a problem with the cables or the way they were run things could get ugly.

-Hal

Cableguy -

I feel your pain. I did the CATV for CNN when they moved into Rockefeller Center here in NYC. We had similar grief until we got Time Warner smacked around and into shape.

Until the cabling experts show up with the proper test equipment, try some basic troubleshooting.

Set up a TV at the demarc and test the picture there. Is it OK there? If it's not, you'll never get a good picture anywhere else.

Then start working your way through the network disconnecting whole segments and rolling the tv around with you as you go.

Identify the segments that are causing the problem and see if you can get at least part of the system up and running.

As Hal said you will need the experts with the proper tools to test the system and identify the problems, but this way at least you'll feel like you're doing something and you'll have a jump on the troubleshooting.

Sam

Unfortunately in this new age of digital too much signal is just as bad as too little. So connecting a TV to various places isn't always going to tell you anything. You can't even tell by the amount of snow that you have a low signal level. With digital it either works or it doesn't, with tiling just before it goes blank or the picture freezes. And there is no way to tell if it's too much or too little. You need test equipment.

Everything depends on proper design from the drop to the sets with the levels calculated before the first piece of wire is even run. There is no room for not knowing what you are doing.

-Hal

Although I will defer to Hal, once I went round and round with TWC here, they finally fixed THEIR problem. And it wasn't in the cabling to the house, that they replaced 2 times, or the cabling in the house, that they said was the problem. (I told them I'd be happy to pay the bill if they were right, but they had to pay me if they were wrong!) They finally dragged out the pro with the equipment and he said thus and so and it was a low level signal to the drop in the house, caused by a bad splitter! And since it was the 'digital' drop, it was way touchier than the other drops. Yeah I know, it's all digital, but I played their game. I wanted the damn thing repaired! John C.

That's the problem I have at my house. Signal is low at the tap and I have 5 sets. Instead of fixing the problem Cablevision runs another drop so now I have 2 sets and the cable modem on one and 3 sets on the other. The rationale was to eliminate one split which eliminated 3.5db worth of loss which was just enough to keep the sets from tiling. But everything is right at the edge of the digital cliff and sometimes I see freezing on some sets.

Lest someone says why didn't I use an amplifier, well that's what I had with the original single drop. They have no reverse gain though and the extra 3.5db was needed to actually get the reverse channel down below +55.

As to why they won't fix the problem out on the street, the problem would have to be escalated to a line tech and as long as the service tech/installer got it to work they won't bother.

-Hal

hal you have exactly the same problem as i. The line covering the street comes from both sides and is terminated by my house (im right in the middle) my neigbor to my left is on a tap behind my right hand neighbor and im behind my left hand nieghbor, of course i have an awful signal and Videotron doesnt seem to care, the technicians solution, get expressvu!

jay, this may not be an alternative for you, but I'm retired! Too much time on my hands. (Idle hands are the devils workshop!) I just called weekly and asked for repair AND a deduction from my bill for the preceding week. Oh, yeah, and mentioned that if they didn't get it fixed soon, I had the NC Corporation Commission in the speed dial of my phone and at the beginning of the following month I was going to start using it DAILY.
Someplace else here I have a thread about doing the same thing about their lo-speed HI-SPEED Internet service. Of course it helped when their tech confirmed that curb-through-computer is capable of well over the 7MBPS they were touting. It would only give me 2.8MBPS, ON THEIR TEST SITE. All you need is time! Good Luck! John C.