Question regarding weird TV intereference

[Jimboc]

Hey All,

I'm the proud new owner of a TiVO and am thoroughly loving it! There is one small issue that is driving me crazy though.

I've noticed some weird reception problems on my TVs in my house on certain channels. Using the TiVO just makes much more obvious due to the analog to digital conversion and MPEG compression. And they are driving me nuts.

I have standard analog cable... family cable, no cable boxes. No HD. I have very little splits and anything I have, I use quad shielded RG6 cable and higher quality bidirectional 1:2 splitters.

Anyway, on only a certain range of channels (about 47 - 57), I get consistent, smooth moving diagonal lines that run across the picture. (See the attachment I dumped from my TiVO, via TivoToGo.) The signal is clean, and the fuzz/static in the capture is just the MPEG and then JPG compression, and they aren't really noticeable on a TV. But the diagonal lines are visible and annoying.
The TiVO is hooked up to my TV via s-video, but to be thorough, I've tried AV cables and coax as output and it makes no difference obviously.

I've changed coax wires, moved TVs around, removed splitters, moved anything away from sources of interference, and pretty much hooked stuff up directly to the main cable line running into the house, and nothing changed. It's obviously coming in from my cable company, and they don't believe anything is wrong. My signal is quite good all around, and this is the only issue.

Is there a line filter or something in particular that could help with something like this? Or any other ways to troubleshoot this? I've tried everything I can think of so far, so any advice is appreciated

Thanks!
--Jim

[litzdog911]

It's a problem with your incoming cable TV signal affecting the higher frequency channels. You'll have to insist that your Cable Company send a technician to check the incoming signal. Add-on filters or amplifiers at your end will only make the problem worse.

[Jimboc]

Yeah, I was hoping to avoid having to deal with tech support, thinking it would be quicker and easier to try to take care of it myself.

In the meantime, if anyone else has any advice while I'm waiting for a technician, please feel free to share.

Thanks!

[Jimboc]

And I must add, that after some more testing, that TiVO tuner seems more sensitive to this interference as compared to the the TV's built in tuner, or that of a VCR.

I'm sure it's partly due to the MPEG compression, but it makes the programs in that channel range pretty unwatchable with the TiVO now.

So I believe since the problem isn't nowhere near as noticeable before adding the TiVO to the chain, the cable company will probably take no real responsibility since it is not their hardware :/

So suggestions are still much appreciated.