Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Pixel breakup on Comcast HD..

Rick:

As Alan said, generally cable companies are ramming everything they can down the line so when you look at the considerably wider bandwidth HD needs, I am surprised it doesn't happen more. The cable on our street is all underground with junction boxes at various points along the way connected to the various homes. Back several months ago we had a REALLY serious problem with break-ups, not only on the HD channels but ALL the channels. As it turned out many of these boxes had to be re-wired and new booster amplifiers installed along the way. When I phoned the company, they said they got a number of complaints on the street so I knew it had nothing to do with anything internal so that , inevitably, will be your determining factor if it is coming from the cable company. If you are the only one that has reported the problem then that is another matter. There is also the practical issue that most people, unlike many of us on this forum, are not tuned in to the nuances and small problems that may be occurring on their television screen. For them, it is either working or not. If nobody else complains then the cable company thinks the problem is with you.

Even today after all the repair work was done, there are STILL periodic breakups. I guess this is something we will have to live with in this multi-hundred channel, multi-communication network.

This is exactly my thinking. We have the same thing with our cable. Even though you have cable, you have to remember that the cable company get its signal from the channel providers by satellite. So I guess you could still expect to have some of the same issues as satellite customers from time to time.

David we don't have the AT&T U-Verse available in our area, otherwise we would have went with that. We have our long distance, internet and now DirecTV though AT&T so we got a bundled price as well as a discount due to my wife being retired from AT&T, we were paying more for Comcast than we do for DirecTV and didn't have the first premium channel, we have them all with Direct. I wasn't aware that I couldn't get an HD DVR with a single feed going into the room so it looks like I'll have to purchase a Tivo.

The pixelation breakup wasn't the reason I changed from Comcast to Direct, I could have lived with the occasional breakup but that dang smart azz girl really got under my skin and after that little episode there was no way in heck I was going to keep them. I was offered every discount, free premium channel and a couple of months free service whenever I called to cancel the service ... where was all of that love for the last nine years I wonder?

This may have been covered, but when I moved into my new HT room, my HD DVR had constant pixelation and frozen screens, while it was generally fine in the previous room. I added a drop-amp in the line in the attic and had the company run a new line to cut the cable run to this location by 2/3 and no more problems. For me, it was just a weak signal. A friend had a similar issue house wide. We added an amp and the problem cleared up.