some digital channels missing


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some digital channels missing

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jestal
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Jul 22, 2005, 1:23 AM

Post #1 of 5 (679 views)
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some digital channels missing	Can't Post

I have an odd problem with our cable performance that I need some ideas on.

I have Comcast in the Milford, Michigan area.

The cable comes into the house and goes to a 3x splitter. One leg goes to the computer and the high speed internet works fine. One leg goes to the digital cable box. Most channels work fine except for stray missing channels....only a blue message box shows up on the screen saying "this channel available shortly". The third leg of the splitter goes to a cable ready tv. One this leg all of the basic channels work fine, including the ones that are missing on the digital box.

For example, channel 25 does not work on the digital box but 25 works fine from the analog signal directly to the cable ready TV.

The problem with the missing digital channels disappears if I eliminate the splitter so I know it is the splitter and assume it is attenuating the digital signal in some way to cause the loss of about 20 channels total.

I have tried a variety of splitters and some work better than others. I currently have a 5-1000 MHz Belden splitter in the system which seems to work the best and is the best splitter that I can find locally.

What kind or brand of splitter do I need to use to prevent this clipping or attenuation of the digital signal so that all the channels from the digital cable box will work...??? No one, including Comcast, seems to know.

Any other ideas on what is going on here and/or how to fix it??

Bursma
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Jul 22, 2005, 8:59 AM

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Re: [jestal] some digital channels missing [In reply to]	Can't Post

Which channels are you missing? (Are there any patterns?)

jestal
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Jul 22, 2005, 10:05 AM

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Re: [Bursma] some digital channels missing [In reply to]	Can't Post

A whole bunch of them....

25,27,39,44,46,47,49,50,55,56,62,67,102(noise),105(noise),109,115,116,117,121......

In between these there are obviously a lot of channels that work perfectly. Unless otherwise noted all these just give a black screen with a blue box saying "channel available shortly". I don't know how Comcast sends the channels in digital so I have no way of knowing if this represents a pattern or not. All these channels (up to 70) work fine on the analog signal to the cable ready TV and VCR tuner.

As soon as I eliminate the splitter with a direct connection to the Comcast cable feed into the house the problem goes away and all the channels on the digital box work fine.

I figure that I am not the only person in the world needing a splitter so it seems unusual to have this problem.

cablejobs
Novice

Jul 30, 2005, 1:32 PM

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Re: [jestal] some digital channels missing [In reply to]	Can't Post

The issue sounds like it is with attenuation, Digital signal is at a lower level than analog, You may need a 10db house amp to boost the signal make sure that it go's up to 1gig.
Dennis C Jones II
21 years in the cable industry.

Petty4317
New User

Sep 13, 2005, 7:49 AM

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Re: [cablejobs] some digital channels missing [In reply to]	Can't Post

I hope you got it fixed by now, but I just had the same problem. The cable connections were not tight so some but not all of the digital channels were being recieved. I tightened them and now all are being recieved.

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