Hi all,

I've got Comcast Digital Cable with a DCT5100 cable box. The picture on quite a few channels (especially SciFi, Spike, and one or two of the locals) down in the analog range is pretty grainy.

I've searched Google for some answers (unsuccessfully) -- is there a way to see what the strength of the signal coming into the box is, or something I can do to improve the analog stations' quality?

The HD pictures are beautiful, and the digital channels all look great. It's just the analog stations that leave a lot to be desired.

The cable goes from the wall to a splitter - one line goes to the TV for PIP, and the other goes to the cable box. The analog stations look good on the TV when I switch to that input. The analogs look awful through the composite input from the DCT5100 (480i), but much better through the S-Video (DCT5100->TiVO->TV, all S-Video). But still, the digital channels are sooo much better through the same route.

Thanks in advance!

Jeff

It’s a little unclear from your description whether your “grainy” means reduced resolution or noise. Reduced resolution would be blurriness. Noise looks like snow, but if minimal it wouldn’t show any “flakes”. A low level of noise resembles film grain.

I am going to assume you are seeing noise. One possibility is that your cable signal is weak and your TV receiver has a better noise figure than your cable box receiver. In this case a signal booster will help. See if your cable company sells one. Another possibility is that you are seeing high frequency noise, above 4 MHz. Your TV receiver will filter that out, but the cable box might not. Component video allows frequencies much higher than 4 MHz. I can’t think of any remedy for this second problem. Buying an amplifier might be the easiest way to distinguish between the two problems.

Try taking out the splitter and feeding only the cable box. If the picture looks any better then you need a booster.

Thanks for the replies. I tried a signal booster once, but that added a LOT of interference to the picture, so I removed it.

When I said it was a grainy picture, I meant that the image on a lot of the analog channels has less resolution. It's like there's a thin layer of grease applied to the screen. Spike and SciFi seem to be the worst.

The antenna input to the TV is also coming from the splitter, and it's a much better picture than the s-video coming from the DCT5100.

Thanks!

Jeff

If you do a web search you can find out how to get into the menu system of your STB. There is not only a signal strength meter but also data error rate which is the critical element for your digital channels and many have resolved their problem using them. Check AVS forum as well.

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I have EXACTLY the same problen on EXACTLY the same stations (Spike and SciFi). I doubt that my system is set up the same way his is nor do I think he is in the same geographical area. With different equipment setup in a different way living in a different city (I am assuming different cities) could this be a bad feed from a satellite or something similiar?

Jeff: I am confident the problem is not yours nor in your hardware. The fault is with either your cable company or the originating studio, and there is nothing you can do about it. The cable company might be sending you the DirecTV version of these channels instead of the C-band version. I just checked, and the C-band version has slightly better resolution. I don’t know why they would do that or why other cable systems would do the same thing. Sci-Fi and Spike TV are both on the Galaxy 5 bird, but so are several other popular channels.

Jeff: When you display these analog channels via the TV’s PIP input are you able to see them full sized (full screen)? If so and if they look much less smeared than the same channels via the DCT5100 then the DCT5100 is at fault. You could ask Comcast for another box. But if it is a design problem affecting only a couple channels, that wouldn’t fix anything.

I’m starting to doubt that there is a single answer to all the observations presented in this thread.

I have Comcast cable and so does Jeff, but I'm pretty sure each regional cable company has there own dishes and receives their signal straight from the bird. So unless we are both using the same regional cable company what else could be the problem? Anybody else using Comcast have the same problem?

This is a relatively new development too because I remember watching Spike TV a couple of weeks ago and it didn't have this problem.

I did not read this thread right. Thought you were complaining about digital reception rather than analog. Ken has it nailed...

Thanks all for your responses. It must be a problem with these particular channels. I think I may try to visit a friend who has DirecTiVO and a large RPTV to see how it looks compared to my digital cable/TiVO setup.

(BTW, I am in Indianapolis...)


Jeff

Well I guess my assumption about being in different geographical locations was wrong. I also live in Indianapolis.

That narrows it down to the signal being provided by Comcast-Indianapolis. I think I will send them an email.