Hopefully someone can give me some advice here. I think I have the problem narrowed down to one or two options at this point, but Im going to give a little back story and some of the stuff I've tried to fix the problems to see if people come to the same conclusion.


Sometime about a year ago, maybe year and a half......new neighbor is moving in. He has the line spotted for utilities and what not...and puts up a privacy fence. When the fence is put up, they basically used the lines for our cable and phone service as the line by which to dig holes for the posts. So they cut through both services in multiple places. And I come home to no phone and no cable service, no notes. No apologies. And apparently no call into service techs to come out and fix it.

Long story short, I end up having to deal with the problem the neighbor created. But over time I began noticing ghosting, shadows, and what most people would call a herringbone effect on the television sets throughout the house.

It got bad enough that I finally called someone from TW to come out and fix it. The guy came out, paraded through the house for awhile. Ran a line from the box on the house to his TV in his fan and saw the same noise. Ran a line from the box in the back of the yard (unhooking the whole house and plugging into it's circuit) and saw the noise on his TV. Told me it appears to be a line problem, and may very well be where the repair was made in the neighbors yard. He said the reason no one else has said anything about it may be due to my house along with 2 neighbors being at the termination end of a run.

So I was passed on to a line tech.....picture never cleared up for two weeks. And I had been told that the line tech just comes out when he does and they rarely ever contact you to let you know when they come out. I called two weeks after the initial visit to see if he had been here, or if I was still waiting. They told me that I was in the queue and they would "bump it up". And the CS rep told me to call back until it's fixed. So I waited another week and called again.

Spoke with yet another CS rep that told me that they would send out another service tech to the house. And I said Im waiting for a line tech and they tell me they can't send those out to my house. Etc etc. Eventually a manager gets involved and they tell me they are sending out a line tech. Guy shows up, he's not a line tech. I denied him access to the house and told him he can do whatever he likes outside the house, but Im not going to let them keep sending guys to my house and have them parade through then pass me off for a month. Well at this point he tells me a line tech came out a day after the original tech and found no problems.


So basically Im in a situation here where each side is telling me it's the other sides issue to resolve. I tell the guy at my house that the problem is still on the sets, he runs a new line from the box to the house, problem persists. And he passes me up to a line tech again.

Line tech comes out the next day. Complains a lot about having to deal with the house problems, spends nearly an hour. He tells me that he's not officially allowed to tell me that the TV tuners are damaged, but that he believes they are. So that's 6 television tuners damaged and just happen to show the exact same problem.

So he brings in a cable box to "prove" it to me. Hooks it up to the cable line coming to the TV, and runs component off the box into the TV to prove that the tuner in the TV is at fault. It DID clean up the signal, but I told him that the box is breaking the signal down and passing only what the TV needs to show video and audio. He starts telling me how he's done this for 20 some odd years, and that he knows it's not a line problem...so it must be a tv tuner problem. Etc etc, at this point Im getting really pissed off at the dude because he's just being quite ignorant and condescending. Sooooooo. He hooks up the cable into the VCR and runs the component off it..and it cleans up the signal. Again I told him that the VCR is just taking the video and audio off the line and passing that signal to the TV. It's essentially filtering out everything but what it knows to the be the frequencies of the video and audio on the coax line. Then he begins ranting about me talking about some "super filter" and that I don't even trust my own hardware.


So, at this point I decide I have an idiot in my house, but Im not 100% convinced that there isn't damage on the line where the fence was put. A fence which has since began to settle and lean. So he runs a line from the back of the house to another terminal box in a neighbors yard and the picture is still dirty. So..I see that the lines aren't damaged, but Im still getting a lot of noise in my signal.


I took it upon myself to check out my internal wiring as much as I could short of running new wires.

I bought new compression ends. They were previously crimped ends, which the TW techs completely lost it over those...so I decided I'd replace them to take yet one more "It's not our problem, it's yours because xxx." excuse out of the equation.

The cable in the walls is shielded, has the braiding...doesn't have the di-electric in the cable.

I do have my own amp, which is yet another excuse TW uses....so during my self done testing I took it out of the equation at points to see if it cleared up.


Basically what I did was eliminate all but one TV, so it was the only television in the house plugged into the outside line. And this TV still had noise on it. I went through every connection point and replaced all crimped ends with compressed ends. And after I finished the picture was actually worse than before, so I began to wonder if maybe the tech was right about the tuners in the televisions being damaged.

At this point I hooked up my brand new westinghouse tx 47 as the sole tv, replaced all the crimped ends with compressed ends. And it was crystal clear when I finished. But before I had noise on it when the other televisions were hooked up. So began thinking that perhaps the other TVs were throwing noise from bad tuners into the lines and causing noise on my new TV.

So I put the amp back into the loop, with the TX as the only TV in it..and it was clear still.

Then I plugged all the televisions back in (after replacing crimped ends with compressed ends) and the noise on the TX was even worse than before the techs ever came out. So I thought maybe more signal was getting through that before, and I though now that one television or maybe two in the loop were cause feedback of sorts. So I began unplugged televisions and had someone watch the TX to see if it cleared up. It cleared up significantly as each tv was disconnected until only it remained.

So I isolated another television and it had noise. So I began thinking of a new possible problem. Not caused by damage, but caused by a new signal that old TVs can't handle. So, what Im thinking at this point is that the neighbor as he was cutting through the cable line was also having the cable company hook up digital service to his house. And that digital signal is also present in the line coming into my house. My new TV can handle it, while the olds ones cant.

So now my theory is that the amp (which is up to 1ghz range) is boosting the analog and digital signals, the digital signal is getting so strong that it's showing up on the old televisions and it's feeding back from them being incapable of handling that frequency and causing my new TV to be really noisy looking also.

And yes my digital television is picking up digital channels in 1080i, etc. They look good, but the analogs look grainy and most channels have some lines running diagonally through them.

Sooooo, any other theories? And if you agree that it's probably the digital signal. What's the easiest way to sold the problem? I was thinking some sort of in-line coax filter to take the frequency digital uses out of the line to all televisions but the ones that can understand it.

It would explain why his cable television box cleared up the TV through component, and why the VCR cleared it up (not as well as the box but significantly)...taking just the video frequencies and the audio frequencies out of a signal that contains a lot more (road runner, digital, etc).


Thanks.

Oh and also, the old televisions would often develop an audible hum when not hooked up to the signal the amp output versus the straight signal from outside.

I think your biggest problem is the damaged "feeder" line in the yard. The line tech may have just looked at levels of the signals, without noting any ingress (that's the local stations leaking in to the line and causing ghosting, and nearby FM stations and 2-way radio transmitters causing herringbone interference).

They should be replacing the entire line from last pedestal, if at all possible. If the fence-guys dug holes on the "Blue Stakes" line (or, whatever your one-call locator service calls it), they should be required to pay the Cable company for it. If Cable mis-marked the lines, then it's their own fault.

The other problem you might have is a hum-loop. This would be indicated by one or two horizontal lines running up the picture....taking about 20 seconds to cycle all the way through.If so, after the Cable is replaced, try an isolator, like the VRD-1FF, here:
http://www.jensen-transformers.com/iso_vid.html

And, try one set-only, without the amp. Running the Cable straight from the incoming line to your set, you should have a good picture on all analog channels. Then, after putting the amp (and your own wiring/splitters) back in the circuit, you should not have any lines, fuzz, or herringbones in any set. If you do, the amp is being overdriven. An attenuator would then help.

I think your biggest problem is the damaged "feeder" line in the yard. The line tech may have just looked at levels of the signals, without noting any ingress (that's the local stations leaking in to the line and causing ghosting, and nearby FM stations and 2-way radio transmitters causing herringbone interference).

They should be replacing the entire line from last pedestal, if at all possible. If the fence-guys dug holes on the "Blue Stakes" line (or, whatever your one-call locator service calls it), they should be required to pay the Cable company for it. If Cable mis-marked the lines, then it's their own fault.

The other problem you might have is a hum-loop. This would be indicated by one or two horizontal lines running up the picture....taking about 20 seconds to cycle all the way through.If so, after the Cable is replaced, try an isolator, like the VRD-1FF, here:
http://www.jensen-transformers.com/iso_vid.html

And, try one set-only, without the amp. Running the Cable straight from the incoming line to your set, you should have a good picture on all analog channels. Then, after putting the amp (and your own wiring/splitters) back in the circuit, you should not have any lines, fuzz, or herringbones in any set. If you do, the amp is being overdriven. An attenuator would then help.

Line in the yard was temporarily replaced by an rj11 line ran above ground to see if that was the problem. Im running on it at the moment with no visible benefit.

Im on the phone right now seeing if I can find a catv filter that will filter out the digital signals. Only one television in the house is digital and it's the only one that doesnt have noise on it when it's hooked straight into the signal with and without the amp between it. So either I got about 5 damaged television tuners or that digital signal is making them bleed noise onto the analog channels.

At least that's my theory at the moment, I have no way of filtering the digital signal at the moment so no way to test if that's true or not aside from using a VCR to convert the coax line into component.

the digital's dont "bleed" or feed back into the amp etc...

thats quite a long first post so i just skimmed so sorry if i missed somethin or ask something you already said but... It could be a knicked feeder or drop, but you say running a new RG11 (from tap to house?) didnt fix it?

Also, u say the first tech has his test tv out side hooked to the drop/tap and had noise too? did the line/maint. tech not do that?

You should really get another maint. guy out there and hook up a test TV to ur drop. if it's noise free then take it inside and hook it up exactly the same as ur TV and see if it's in fact ur TV. If it does have noise at thd drop, then try the tap, if so, then that will prove to him it's in the feeder. take it to the next tap down BEFORE the fence area and if its noise free there, then BAM, ingress from that span!

Also, did u say they didnt and woudlnt change the old crimp style F connectors? That's a must usually, they at least have to be snap-n-seal here at least

Line in the yard was temporarily replaced by an rj11 line ran above ground to see if that was the problem. Im running on it at the moment with no visible benefit.

Im on the phone right now seeing if I can find a catv filter that will filter out the digital signals. Only one television in the house is digital and it's the only one that doesnt have noise on it when it's hooked straight into the signal with and without the amp between it. So either I got about 5 damaged television tuners or that digital signal is making them bleed noise onto the analog channels.

At least that's my theory at the moment, I have no way of filtering the digital signal at the moment so no way to test if that's true or not aside from using a VCR to convert the coax line into component.
The digital signals are always there, regardless of whether you or anyone else subscribes to a digital package. Pretty much the same as saying that I have Basic cable and when my neighbor subscribed to Expanded Basic my pictures went down the toilet.

Above 550MHz is where most of the digital channels reside. Analog channels go up to 550MHz (ch 78), and digital channels can go down to 330MHz (ch 42). Obviously, the overlap. Any channels between 42 & 78 that seem to be empty might have some digital channels on them.

As already written, those humbars you see may be caused by a ground loop. Either the Jensen isolator or the Holland CISP http://www.cencom94.com/gpage.html8.html should resolve that issue.

Also as already written, that ghosting and herringbone pattern are probably a result of ingress -- unwanted signals leaking into the cable. That could range anywhere from your damaged feeder to a loose connector on your drop somewhere. Could be a splitter with poor port-to-port isolation, which is allowing ingress introduced at one outlet to make its way to other outlets.

Yeah, Im just going to forget about trying to solve it. I've done some replacing of stuff and didn't get much if any benefit out of it besides a lot of wasted time and effort.

No one from the cable company has called it humbars, think most of them mentioned ingress. None of them would say sure fire way to fix it beyond what I figured they would say "Cable Boxs\rerun cables". Actually got one to say it might be the TV tuner, and this same guy admitted that a cable box doesn't always fix the issue. Which Im not going to get into renting a handful of cable boxes to resolve an issue that cropped up after a long while of no problems.

At this point it's like taking the car to most mechanics, their equipment isn't getting any trouble codes so they don't know how to approach the problem and just blame what they don't have a guarantee or obligation to replace at their cost.

Really Im getting it from both sides. Family complains that the picture is poor, and cable company tells me it's fine. I can see it's got problems on certain channels and one television has problems on all. But I also got both sides giving me a lot very iffy answers to questions. I'll ask be in the basement where all the wiring is centralized if all the TVs are working, I get a yes out of them. Then the next day Ill find a TV that isn't getting a signal (I activated the wrong port in the room).

On the other side the cable service techs told me it was a line issue, the line techs tell me it's a service tech issue. Then the final service tech guy tells me it's the tv tuner/poor cabling/amp/splitters/anything else he could blame it on that Time Warner didn't install.

Had a consumer advocate call and leave a message one day, I tried calling her back four times during the week giving her 3 different numbers to reach me at. None of them showed a message or missed call from the advocate. So I figure let the family members get pissed off enough at the problems and maybe they'll just drop TW service altogether because thus far while they make a big show of parading people through the house and yard....they just want to come in, put in a new drop, and call it done.

So, just going to call it fixed until the problem gets so bad it can't be ignored.
I almost wonder if the coax line coming into the house isn't frying equipment because I've had at least one amp go bad and the replacement had ports die, plus the internet goes through spurts of cutting out often then being fine for weeks.

I would call Time Warner corporate at (203) 328-0600. Explain to them everything that has gone on (perhaps even print out your posts here and read from them) and express your extreme frustration at not being able to get it fixed. You have every right in the world to expect a good product and good service, which you definitely are not getting. This problem has gone on far too long and you want it resolved now.