Problems with Digital Channels

[john262]

I have had Charter analog cable TV service for a few months here in Elko, Nevada and I have been satidfied with it. I get a good picture considering it's analog, even on my 46" inch screen. Where I used to live in California I had Comcast and some of the channels there had video noise such as squiggly lines dancing around on the screen, but here that wasn't a problem.

Then I got a letter form them offering digital cable for one dollar a month more for 12 months with the proviso that I could cancel at any time, so I signed up for that.

So a technician came out and installed digital service on both of my TV's. Before I had the cable connected directly to my TV's, but now of course I have two digital cable boxes. I had to pay $4 and change extra for the second box, but still, digital cable including the Showtime and HBO packages for about five bucks per month extra isn't bad.

After the installation, I got good digital pictures on both TV's. It also includes that DMX music service, and the music sounded pretty good when I connected the cable box's audio out jacks to my stereo system.

The only complaint I had was that when I tuned in a digital channel it took a long time for the picture to come on, but once it did the picture was stable and clear. The technician said that it was normal for digital cable to be that way.

Well, to make a long story short, the next morning I got up and tried to tune in one of the HBO channels and I got this message, "One moment please, this channel should be available shortly." I tried surfing to other digital channels and got the same thing on every channel, including the music channels. No matter how long I stayed on a channel, I would only get the message and the picture never came on. The other digital features such as the info menu still worked.

Then I tried my other TV and on that one the digital channels took even longer than before to come on, however most of them worked, but a few of them but not most also gave me that "one monent please" message. On both TV's the analog channels came in just fine. It was only digital that was the problem.

Well, since it was on both TV's even though the problem was worse on one of the TV's, I decided to wait for a while to see if it cleared itself up. I thought that maybe they were having some kind of problems at their head end.

And sure enough, when I got home from work it was working again. So I thought everything was OK although the digital channels were taking a long time to come on even though once they did they were OK.

Then the next day in the evening I lost all digital channles again on one TV and got the "one moment please" message while on the other TV the digital channels still worked. I didn't know what to think. Was one cable box defective, was I getting a poor signal through my cable, or what? I was still getting good clear analog pictures so I don't think it's signal quality, but I'm not sure.

So this time I called Charter and got through to a customer rep. He said that there were no other reports of problems in my area and he asked me to check to make sure the cable was attached tightly to the box. I told him it was just installed a couple of days ago, but I checked anyway and the cables were tight. So he scheduled a visit from a tech tomorrow morning.

My question to you guys is this. What do you think is wrong? Do you think I might have defective cable boxes or a bad cable running into my house, or might it be problems at their head end that the guy on the phone didn't know about? Also, is it normal for the digital picture to take a few seconds to resolve or not?

Thanks a lot for your help. I know this was a long one but I wanted to go into detail about the problem. The boxes are General Instrument model DCT1234
.

 

[Ilya]

Welcome to the forum, john262!

Sounds like the signal might be too strong, too weak, or just too noisy. On digital channels, you don't see the picture noise or distortion, instead you get that message. The technician should be able to troubleshoot this problem.

And yes, it does take longer to switch digital channels. Depending on the type of your box it can be anywhere from 1 second to several seconds. Once the signal quality problem is fixed, this may or may not improve the channel switching delay. Ask the technician if you can get a different type of box, perhaps a DVR - it might work better and give you additional features too.

Good luck!

 

[cableman265]

Hey John, I saw that you are from Nevada. I dont know if the same things are going on there as in the StLouis area. There have been problems with certain groups of digital channels because Charter has started switching digital channel groups over to 256 QAM which makes them much more sensitive to the amount of signal and type of splitters and cable in the house. They are doing this in certain areas when they are getting close to launching VOIP, which also uses 256 QAM. It usually isnt a big deal, its just that the signal has dropped a few Db, and its quite simple to find a way to get them back. If it is not the 256 QAM thing, then it is still going to be a signal issue. Something may be going bad causing you to lose a bit too much signal before it gets to the box. Either way, i think the guy should be able to find it pretty easily. Good luck and let us know.

 

[john262]

Thanks for your replies guys. It turns out that one of the set top boxes was defective, so the tech who visited this morning gave me another box. It's a slightly different looking box. It's smaller and it's a Motorola DCT2244. As soon as he hooked up this box the digital channels came on right away, and now that it has had time to download everything seems to be OK. And yes, the channels switch more quickly too.

Now as far as my other outlet goes, I told the tech that a couple of digital channels didn't work on it as well a couple of days ago, but everything is OK now. He checked it out and concluded that everything is OK with that box, so he left it as is but told me to call back if I have any problems with it. He left me his business card with his cell phone number on it and told me I could call him directly if I need to. I thought that was a nice touch.

So for now everything is OK. Again, thanks for your replies and I'll let you know if anything else happens.