Less powerful tuner?

687 Views 8 Replies 6 Participants Last post by shwru980r, Jun 22, 2011

Dan203

Discussion Starter · Jun 20, 2011

OK so I have 4 TiVos in my living room. An old S2, two original S3 units and a Premiere. Recently I moved and the new place doesn't get as good of a cable signal as the old place, so I've been focusing some attention on improving the signal quality. I originally had it setup so the cable from the wall, which is amplified by a high quality remote amplifier, connects to a 6 way splitter which had 4 legs feeding the TiVos and one leg, which then got split again 3 way, to feed the tuning adapters. The other leg was capped by an F terminator. With this setup I got >80% signal strength on all channels via my S3 but the Premiere was getting <50% of a few channels, and in some cases couldn't tune them at all. In an effort to fix the problem I replaced some wiring and changed the setup to split the cable from the wall 2 ways, one going directly to the Premiere and the other leg to a 4 way splitter which then fed the other devices just like before. My S3 units now get >90% on all channels but my Premiere still has trouble with a few channels. It did improve somewhat, boosting the strength to 70-80% on most of them but I've still had a few occasions where it fails to tune the station or a recording from those channels is badly pixelated. I also tried removing the splitter completely and connecting the cable from the wall directly to the premiere and it still only improved those stations by a couple of %. If I do the same with either of the S3 units I get 100% on all channels.

Is the tuner in the Premiere just that bad? Or is there something else I can do to fix this? Right now I'm just moving the SPs and recordings from the effected channels over to the S3 units, but it kind of sucks that I have to filter things like that.

Dan

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TiVoJerry

· #2 · Jun 20, 2011

I had a similar problem at home (TiVo HD + Premiere) but only on a few channels. I disconnected the THD & splitter, which helped but did not resolve the situation. I swapped out RF cable with no change. I called Comcast out to check the signal on particular channels and they did find the need to boost my signal a bit, but the problem still showed up intermittently (and wildly unpredictably).

Then I brought another Premiere box in and it did not have the problem when using all of the exact same connections that the first one was using. It's only one data point but you may have a similar hardware issue.

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Dan203

Discussion Starter · #3 · Jun 20, 2011

Well that sucks. If it's a hardware issue then I'm SOL because this Premiere is >90 days old and has lifetime service attached to it.

Dan

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TiVoJerry

· #4 · Jun 20, 2011

I'm not saying it's definitely an issue, but something you may want to consider. If you have access to anyone with a Premiere, you may want to do a side-by-side (at your house or theirs) and see if there is a difference.

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Dan203

Discussion Starter · #5 · Jun 20, 2011

Unfortunately I do not know anyone else with a Premiere to run that test.

Oh well, for now I'll just stick to recording programs from those stations on the S3 units.

Dan

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jaredmwright

· #6 · Jun 20, 2011

I had the same exact problem. I ended up having to add a signal amplifier to get my Premiere up to 90%, it was about 50-70% prior while my S3 would be in the 90's. I have an HD, S3 and Premiere and it is most sensitive to signal variations. I had tons of macroblocking and black channels until I added the amplifier. You have already done this unfortunately so it appears you don't have many more options. Are you seeing high values in your cable card diagnostics screen for the RS values? I think that is what they are called, not in front of my TiVo. I had 100 of thousands before getting my premiere signal cleaned up then it went down to a few to at most 100 corrected. I believe the uncorrected are the most concerning. I went with an 8 way splitter to reduce the number of splitters since each one reduces signal further and it helped as well. I would also question the cable card and see about swapping it as a last resort. Good luck.

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caddyroger

· #7 · Jun 21, 2011

I using a amplifier on my line going to my premiere also. I got a lot micro blocking.

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mattack

· #8 · Jun 21, 2011

You should definitely contact your cable company to check the signal. They may be able to add more connections for you with guaranteed signal quality.

(I have a 4 way powered amplifier in my bedroom for my Tivos, since we already have the max splitters elsewhere..)

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shwru980r

· #9 · Jun 22, 2011

Dan203 said:
Well that sucks. If it's a hardware issue then I'm SOL because this Premiere is >90 days old and has lifetime service attached to it.

Dan

Won't they let you exchange it for a refurbished unit for $50?

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