"Nate Nagel" wrote in message
...
someone 'splain this to me...

sitting here on the couch, TV is ****ing me off, going all pixellated at odd
intervals. Finally got bad enough that I was considering calling the cable
company but before I did I went over to the rack and started touching all the
cables to make sure they were tight. Got to the coax going into the back of
the cable box, it was tight, but touching the cable would make the signal drop
out. Unscrewed it, bent the center conductor slightly to have it make better
contact, reinstalled. Still pixellates and audio drops out. went over to the
"electrical section" of my basement, grabbed some RG6 quad, whipped myself up
a 6 foot cable. Installed it in place of the old cable from the surge
suppressor to the cable box. Perfect picture. What gives? I'm sure the old
cord was the one that came with the cable box - 2 yrs. old. How could a piece
of solid copper suddenly just "go bad?" I'm not complaining as it was an easy
fix, but still, it's pretty weird. Old cable meters OK, too... but doesn't
work. weird.

I do know that my cable company discouraged the use of "substandard" cables,
like those from Rat Shack. They were happy to give me cables (a few years back)
rather than have me buy others. It apparently doesn't take much of a defect to
cause bad reflections or such.

I just added a couple QAM digital capable tuners to my PC home theatre computer.
I ended up doing a lot of fussing with my cable amplifier, splitters and cables
to get good reception on all the digital channels, eliminating the gaps in the
video I initially had. I suspect it's still a little iffy. I may need a better
amplifier.