gelbelt
join:2002-03-06
Atlanta, GA
| reply to gelbelt
Re: digital cable and splitting
It looks like I have two choices:
1) Call the cable company, set up an appointment, wait for the tech, use all of my patience explaining the problem to him and still not getting it fixed the way I want it, and ending up with an amp going into the set-top box that I don't want and will end up moving anyway. The problem is obviously that there isn't enough signal at the street or else I wouldn't have -10 dBmV at the ground block. He wouldn't acknowledge that and really didn't know what he was talking about. He kept on about the upstream being the problem even though I told him the downstream was -18 dBmV at the set-top box but the upstream there was around 35 dBmV. This indicates the set-top box and modem aren't having to crank up their gains to reach the other end.
2) Do it my way, and live with the poor signal level coming into the house, hoping I have enough SNR and good enough components to add gain myself. I'm thinking about moving all of the cable pulls inside the garage instead of outside, then adding an amp and splitters there along with the new pulls of RG-6 quad shield.
As I said, the Radio Shack amp was just an experiment. I will say that it works well and adds a good amount of gain without badly degrading the SNR. If I decide to do the work myself I'll be returning the Radio Shack amp and getting a more professional one.
By the way, when I called the cable company I was told they'd have a technician out sometime in the next few days, "probably before Monday." Nobody could reasonably expect me to sit at home for the entire weekend waiting on a cable tech. If he was ticked off right from the start he shouldn't be working for Time Warner. Would you rather me have not left a note, so he'd be left with no aids when he got to the house?
Thanks for your help along the way. I did find a tutorial on Scientific Atlanta's web site about using the diagnostic pages, but it mainly talks about the initial setup. It doesn't say anything about troubleshooting signal problems. |
