Comcast digital cable help needed

[Crinkle]

The house I bought had cable run through the whole place by the original owner years ago. When I moved in 3 years ago, they re-ran new cable to the upstairs location where I use to have the Cable box. Since we finished the basement with comfy couches and surround sound I moved the cable box down there. In the past 2 weeks the cable has been crapping out more and more. Especially on regular broadcast channels (cbs, nbc). By crapping out I mean the video feed will go blank and some sound will come through, blank for a second or two. Very annoying. Also when I first put it downstairs, the On-demand features would ALWAYS crap out.

So last night my wife had enough and unplugged the cable box and just plugged in the TV and it worked fine, but no onscreen menus and such, which I like. I am to the conclusion that I need to re-run cable down to the basement. Anyone with knowledge about cable types. I know on the upstairs line there are filters on the line, place there by the installer. Will this work to just re-run the cable? Do I have to get comcast out here to do it? (would like to do it myself and not pay out the nose for this) Do I need to use a specific type of cable? Maybe put the filters on the new cable?

edit: we don't have the HD package, just the comcast basic digital package

any help appreciated.
crink

[JoshP]

I have Comcast digital cable too.

Can't help you with running the cable, but I have found that if I leave the cable box on all the time, it runs way better than if I turn it off when I am not watching. I have had similar problems with loss of menus, sound and no video etc.

Since I have left it on, it has been bomber.

[Crinkle]

yeah its on all the time, i only turn the tv off. I called and got an appointment, figured it would be worth whatever money I have to pay and get it done right the first time instead of constantly dicking with different solutions.

[SkiEvil]

1. Make sure all the connections are tight, this is suprisingly the issue more times than not.

2. Get a new box from the cable company. Usually you can just stop in the office and they will exchange it.

3. Have Comcast come out and test the signal strength into the outlet where the problem box located. The digital boxes require more "power" than an analog connection.

Evil

[Dirty Hoar]

You most likely have a bad crimp on one of the connectors or the cable itself has been damaged. A splitter may also be bad but that's rarely the case. The first thing I would do to troubleshoot it is check the connectors at both ends. If they look alright(doesn't mean they are) I would run a test cable from the splitter down to your box and see if that solves the problem. If it works, replace the old cable with the new one.

If that doesn't solve the problem then it's most likely up the line further. It could be your box but it sounds like it was working fine in another room. Connect the known bad line to the splitter where the known good line is connected and then test. If that solved the problem then your splitter is bad on one port.

Alot of time people will use a stapler to tack the cable to baseboard and will accidentally nick the cable. If you replace the cable make sure you use RG6 and not RG59 and don't use a stapler.

Let me know if you have more questions.

[shmerham]

You might need to run some 55-ohm (I believe that's the rating) cable down to the basement. If it's 75 ohm cable, it's probably not going to carry the digital cable signal a long distance.

[Crinkle]

cable guy was cool as school, turns out it was a bad spliter. Old school splitters have a frequency of 66mhz and the ON DEMAND stuff runs at much higher frequency, hence some of it working and spacing out once and a while.

also removed an old RF pass filter from the back of the box. Its all good and new remote, no charge, bueno!