RE: Television Mystery

[firefighterjake]

So Time Warner announced a large rate increase . . . which prompted my wife and I to think about going back to OTA and streaming for our TV. We had this before the cable TV and it worked out well enough.

I hooked up everything as before . . . and oddly enough . . . our TV in the living room will not pick up one of the local channels despite it's antenna being only 14 miles away. Previously this station came in the best without rotating the antenna at all. Now, even with rotating the antenna we pick up nothing. Other stations further away are coming in crystal clear on the TV.

Thinking it might have been the cable I hooked up another TV to the same cable and the station came in fine.

Any ideas as to what might be going on . . . I would think if it was the tuner that I would not receive any stations and not just the one . . . and as mentioned . . . this TV worked fine when we had OTA hooked up slightly over a year ago.

Honestly, at this point I am thinking of getting a newer TV set (the old one is a Panasonic plasma from 2008) and seeing if the new TV picks up the signal.

 

[blades]

Might be the station no longer broadcasts on the frequency in question. If it is still broadcasting. They may have had an equipment failure or are switching equipment. There are still a few stations that do not broadcast 24/7 as well.

 

[peakbagger]

One option that time warner is forced to offer that they hate talking about is Basic Cable. They are legally obligated to offer mostly over the air channels in a basic package at low cost. .I am too far from urban areas to get any OTA stations.

Trying to get a rep to talk about it requires patience. The reps are trained to switch you over to standard cable. I needed to check the cost of this service awhile back and the call went this way

Me; Hi I want to get the price of basic service

Rep; Oh you want the price of standard service

Me; No I want the price of basic service

Rep: The price of standard service is X

Me: I didn't want the price of standard service I want the price of the federally mandated over the air service

Rep: You will need to talk to my supervisor

Super: How can I help you:

Me: I want the price of basic cable service

Super: Oh you mean standard service

Me: No I want the price of federally mandated basic cable service

Super: Okay I can get you that price, you are aware that the service is very limited, standard cable is a much better value.

Soon after that I swapped to TW Business Class, they have different techs and reps and they don't have mush use for the residential. I added my residential basic cable and didn't have the run around.

One observation is that I am not a sports fan and I have no use for most sports channels, they are programmed out of my remote. Reportedly the cost of ESPN and other sports channels are more than half the cost of standard cable. In order for cable company to get access to the service they have to make it part of the base package. The technology is available for ala cart but with no competition the cable companies would rather spend a few bucks buying congressmen to keep their monopoly.

 

[velvetfoot]

Thinking it might have been the cable I hooked up another TV to the same cable and the station came in fine.

It must be the TV then. Perhaps it's not on the right channel, like the analog one that doesn't exist anymore.

 

[greg13]

OTA TV signals are now digital, you will need a digital converter.

 

[velvetfoot]

My old TV does digital and analog signals. Just mentioning it.

 

[firefighterjake]

Well curious and curiousier . . .

As mentioned I switched out TVs and while the plasma TV (let's call this TV A) originally in the living room did not pick up the one station, the LCD (TV B) did . . . without moving the antenna, switching out cable, etc. So I thought it was the TV and not the cable.

Went out and bought another TV and moved TV A to the master bedroom and hooked up the cable line in there (separate due to a splitter) and voila . . . there is the TV station. Is it possible that the cable line going to the living room has degraded to the point where it could not be picked up by TV A, but was able to be picked up by TV B due to the differences in the tuner or TV construction?

I'm seriously thinking about picking up some new RG-6 cable and seeing if that makes a difference . . . and returning the TV (although it is quite nice). Not sure if there is a huge difference in regular RG-6 and quad shielded RG-6.


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All of our TVs have built in digital tuners, so this is not the issue.


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Peakbagger: If you don't mind me asking . . . how much do you pay and how many channels do you receive? Time Warner offered their standard TV offer of 20 channels. I assumed that was the same as their basic federally mandated.

 

[firefighterjake]

I've decided to keep the TV . . . as I am quickly getting accustomed to having the much larger TV in the master bedroom.

My wife is wondering if perhaps somehow the one station was locked out of the plasma TV . . . as it now can come in on other lines . . . although at this point I am not planning on unhooking it and rehooking it at the original location to see if it works now.

I am also planning on checking with Time Warner today . . . as it looks like it may actually be cheaper to go with the basic (they call it their "starter" plan) TV with internet vs. stand-alone internet (which doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

 

[maple1]

This cable/satellite TV business is quite the racket.

Right up there with the cell phone business.

 

[peakbagger]

Be real careful, a lot of the bundle packages are tied with long term contracts, they give you great deal for the first year and soak you for the rest of the contract term. Try to get out of it and you pay a bundle to cancel.

By the way, many TVs have a "reset" command somewhere in the menu tree. Sometimes its just worth resetting it to the factory default and seeing what happens. DO note a Plasma TV eats a lot of power compared to the newer LED TVs

 

[firefighterjake]

Be real careful, a lot of the bundle packages are tied with long term contracts, they give you great deal for the first year and soak you for the rest of the contract term. Try to get out of it and you pay a bundle to cancel.

By the way, many TVs have a "reset" command somewhere in the menu tree. Sometimes its just worth resetting it to the factory default and seeing what happens. DO note a Plasma TV eats a lot of power compared to the newer LED TVs

HehHeh . . . I suspect our hot tub uses a lot more power than the plasma TV though. Bill for the house electric has never been exceptionally high -- figure around $125 in the Winter.

 

[fbelec]

just for the info the quad shield is better for long runs. it has less signal loss and also some of the splitters have different amounts of signal coming out of each hookup on the splitter

 

[billb3]

Reset
Rescan

If you have any RG59 - lose it
Check splitters
Check coax ends
Check for crushed cables.

We gave up on Comcast TV quite a while ago. Pretty much only miss the Discovery channel and one of the history channels.
We're pretty much avid book readers though. Got almost $500 Amazon credit in the ibooks class action lawsuit. LOL

 

[Highbeam]

We dropped cable and switched to OTA several years ago and use DSL for streaming internet and Netflix. It's great. I'm about 40 miles from the towers and an antenna in the attic has been excellent for us. The kids just watch streamed Netflix on their kindles and leave the TVs to us. Weird. They would rather binge watch reruns of old sitcoms for hours than current TV with the commercials.

Modern DSL is quite good. 30$ a month.

 

[iamlucky13]

DO note a Plasma TV eats a lot of power compared to the newer LED TVs

They do draw more, but the difference gets exaggerated by a lot of the professional reviewers.

I measured my 51" plasma TV as varying between 100 and 150 W on a Kill a Watt meter. The energy guide sticker suggested 110 W average. I just looked up the energy guide for a new LED-backlit TV of similar size, and it's numbers work out to 67 Watts average. The difference is less than $10 a year unless you watch more than about 6 hours of TV a day. I watch less than that a week.

I went with plasma because I'm rather picky about color and contrast. I'd seen too many cheap LCD's that were bad enough I couldn't ignore it, and the good LCD's have only come down to comparable prices to plasmas in the time since plasmas went out of production.

We dropped cable and switched to OTA several years ago and use DSL for streaming internet and Netflix. It's great. I'm about 40 miles from the towers and an antenna in the attic has been excellent for us. The kids just watch streamed Netflix on their kindles and leave the TVs to us. Weird. They would rather binge watch reruns of old sitcoms for hours than current TV with the commercials.

Modern DSL is quite good. 30$ a month.

There's a lot of older, quality shows out there that are unappreciated (same goes for literature). The main TV I watched growing up was Nick@Nite with the same shows my parents did - Green Acres, Hogans Heroes, Gilligan's Island, etc.

Having this stuff even more accessible on Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. is great.

I could say more about DSL, but this post would get long, and my experience with Comcast internet is just as bad, in different ways, and at higher cost.