Bright House Networks - Legacy → [TV] A fan switch causes Brighthouse picture to go black (?)

I've been working with electronics for a large portion of my life and it seems there's always something that surprises me The other day I noticed that when flipping the switch in my master bathroom for the exhaust fan my Brighthouse picture went black for about a second and then instantly came back on. The box did not restart and the TV did not turn off. I tested this again on my Roku on the same TV in the same bedroom and it did not happen, not even one time.

I have since switched the HDMI cable to a different port and it has not happened since then. Has anyone experienced anything remotely close to this? Obviously, I am not blaming Brighthouse at all for this I just find it to be very strange.

Gary, have you ever experienced anything like this or heard of anyone who has?

Remotely: had a bit of an electrical problem whereby whenever the A/C came on, all the incandescents in the house would momentarily dim.

Does the exhaust pull a lot of power? Still, it shouldn't fix itself by simply moving to a different HDMI port...might warrant a little more investigation.

Is it possible it's a bad ground somewhere?

Yes, electrical affects Data connections. I worked with Support when I worked for a Telco, and we were troubleshooting this Data Line it was getting errors intermittently. The cause was this Florescent Light that was going out and flickering, causing errors on the Data Line. The Power connection to the Data Line was on the same circuit as the Florescent Light, we connected the Data Line to a different outlet on a different circuit and problem solved. So you just have to connect your Brighthouse to an outlet on a different circuit than the Exhaust Fan. Sometimes that's not easy to do, and an Electrician has to be brought in to re-wire the circuits.

I had something similar going on with my living room TV.

If I hit the switch for the ceiling fan the TV would go black for a split second. The switch for the fan is on the same wall as the outlets supplying the TV. I ended up correcting the the issue, inadvertently, by moving the receiver (I have DirecTV) to the other side of the entertainment center. It's still plugged in to the surge strip on the same wall outlet, but physically moving the receiver further away from the switch was the fix, apparently.

I'm thinking a fan motor going bad or suspect ground and it needs to be checked sooner than later.

Here again, I had the same problem in my house in Palm Desert, when the A/C came on the lights in the Master Bathroom would go dim and also trip the circuit breaker if too many things were plugged in. After a few years the circuit board on the A/C Fan Unit blew. The Electrician found that the A/C Unit was wired wrong, it should have been on it's own circuit and circuit breaker. When it was wired correctly, problem solved no more dim lights or tripped breakers.

I would lean towards bad ground or wore out motor too, more likely motor test it's amp draw.

Sounds like an issue I had in my last house. When I'd turn on the ceiling fan my TV would flicker for a couple of seconds, and then equalize. Brighthouse buried a new drop to the house, but no love. Next they rewired the entire house -- reducing the number of splitters from 4 to 2. Still, no love!

Finally a tech was out to test signals, and when he removed the coax from the cable box is shocked him! At that point he dropped everything, and I grabbed my meter. That plug didn't have a ground, and it was grounding itself through the cable box. I dropped a new 12/3 and put it on a 20A breaker. Life was happy until I moved Seeing 90+ VAC on a coax is never a good thing...

Thanks Gary. I was leaning towards a failing motor as well. It's odd how it was only happening when on input with Brighthouse receiver but not on DVD player or Roku. My fiance says "oh yea, it's been doing that for a while now..."

I gave her a blank stare as to why she never mentioned it to me before

Thanks to everyone. I will keep investigating on this issue. I just found it very odd that only the signal went out but not the actual power to the boxes. I also couldn't understand why I could not reproduce the problem at all on any other HDMI connected devices. Of course, since I've swapped it to a different HDMI input I haven't been able to reproduce the problem at all.

When I have some more time over the weekend I will play around with this a bit more.

Strangely enough, the TV in my bedroom causes the ceiling fan lights to very very slightly "blink" when I turn the TV on. It's a cheapo 32" Dynex, so lord knows it is likely the culprit versus a bad ground elsewhere or with the fan.

I have a 32" TV that does that , I dont think anything is bad , whats happening is when you turn on the tv , the degaussing coil activates. In a large tv set
those things pull some current for a second to demagnetize the CRT. Now
it could be a problem if it is a LCD type.

Yup, 32" LCD. It's an apartment, so I am certainly not going to start investigate the wiring