Intermittent tiling and picture stalling problems with Cox Northern Virginia digital cable for almost 2 years. Diagnostics on Scientific American digital box show at times very high uncorrected bytes figures. Cox has replaced box, all outside wiring and made numerous repairs of equipment down the line. Their latest theory is that frequencies emanating from a tower about 3 blocks away are causing interference into the box (their words). This tower seems to be more than just a cell tower; it is located on the grounds of a community college. I have been unable to get more detail from Cox (nor from the county). I am curious if this makes any sense; whether signals from a tower could be interfering with a digital cable signal. Thanks.

Could be the signal falling off the digital cliff on the "too-strong" side.

An easy test for this is to unscrew the incoming coax until hanging by just a thread or two, and pulling the center wire out from firmly seated, to weaken the signal just enough to see if any diff.

If true, a cheap attenuator will fix.

A little more info here. (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=12309999#Cliff1)

FYI, yes a cell tower can destroy cable signal via ingress. I worked in an area directly under an ATT tower that emitted enormous power at 159.125 MHz (to the best of my recollection - it's been a while) right in the middle of a carrier. It wiped it out intermittently. After we upgraded to fiber, the problem was expelled from our plant but folks still picked it up directly in their homes with inferior cabling and so forth.

In short it depends on the frequency/ies being emitted by the tower and the condition of the cable plant outside and the cable drop network in your home. Impossible to tell the specifics from afar, unfortunately, but again it's not only possible it's fairly common.

Thanks for the confirmation that this is indeed plausible. It's does not augur well for a fix. I am told that Verizon FIOS customers are also experiencing interference from this tower.

Thanks, I will give this a try.

My Comcast DVR produces video and audio glitches too. I timed them today and found they occur at exactly 30 second intervals! I tried swapping boxes from Comcast (SA 8300HD replaced with Cisco RNG200) but that did not correct the problem. They are sending a tech on Tuesday. Occasionally with the new box I got today (Cisco RNG200) the glitch is so bad it causes the box to lock up and reboot! I dread watching football tomorrow and having to go through several reboots in the middle of the games.

Not happy to hear there are similar problems with FIOS boxes. They laid the fiber last week and we will have that option very soon. I was hoping that would end my problems.

Could be the signal falling off the digital cliff on the "too-strong" side.

An easy test for this is to unscrew the incoming coax until hanging by just a thread or two, and pulling the center wire out from firmly seated, to weaken the signal just enough to see if any diff.

If true, a cheap attenuator will fix.

A little more info here. (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=12309999#Cliff1)


:eek:

Not in the cable biz, huh?

Could be the signal falling off the digital cliff on the "too-strong" side.

An easy test for this is to unscrew the incoming coax until hanging by just a thread or two, and pulling the center wire out from firmly seated, to weaken the signal just enough to see if any diff.

If true, a cheap attenuator will fix.

A little more info here. (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=12309999#Cliff1)

My problem was with an external QAM tuner blocking, tiling the Fox network then losing it altogether. Not being able to watch football on Fox was driving me crazy. I never thought of the digital cliff on the too strong side. I happened to have a 6dB attenuator and to my amazement not only did it reaqppear but CW also appeared.
Wanted to say thanks for solving my problem.

My problem was with an external QAM tuner blocking, tiling the Fox network then losing it altogether. Not being able to watch football on Fox was driving me crazy. I never thought of the digital cliff on the too strong side. I happened to have a 6dB attenuator and to my amazement not only did it reaqppear but CW also appeared.
Wanted to say thanks for solving my problem.
I like simple solutions and happy endings. Glad I could help! :)