Okay, so my neighbor had some landscaping work done in his backyard yesterday, and the guy delivering the dirt drove a Bobcat loader full of dirt in the scoop between our houses to get to neighbor's backyard. Problem is, we got an inch and a half of rain the other day and the ground was soft. He dug ruts about 6 inches deep. He drove over where the buried utility lines go from the street boxes to hookups on side of my house, including buried CATV coax.

I'm very anal about my picture quality and last night wife and I both noted that the picture looked darker, like the brightness needed to be turned up several clicks, from what it was before. This is on a 51" HDTV, Insight Digital 3.0 services, picture has been stone cold killer perfect up until this.

I'm now wondering if it stretched the buried coax or pressed an area of it against a sharp rock or something (new subdivision, house built 2005) and messed it up enough to cause some signal leakage or whatever.

I did go into my Cable Modem status screen and checked downstream signal-to-noise ratio, upstream power level, etc. and it seems the same or close to what it usually is.

I got Insight tech coming out Tuesday to check it out, I was just wondering what any CATV gurus here thought.

Neighbor is cool, a retired couple we are friends with, they were very apologetic, plus they're a little wigged about it too because he cut a swath through their front yard coming off the street, and my neighbor is pretty anal about his grass.

 

The cable is probably fine. If the ground was soft, it just pushed it down into the mud rather than flatten or crimp it. You should see any problems show in the signal monitor.

Second, what kind of landscaper drives a bobcat on the lawn a) after a rain, and b) without boards under the tires to spread the weight and not leave tracks? That should be standard procedure any time they have to go onto a lawn. They obviously are not into doing quality work. (I'm in the business).

 

Most CATV cables are pretty tough. More likely the stretch pulled on a connector, if anything.

Cajun

 

There shouldn't be any affect on the brightness unless the cable is almost completely broken and there's barely a signal. The digital cable runs on a data stream just like your cable modem instead of an analog carrier signal on the old systems.

How do you have your cable box hooked up to your TV? Component, composite, DVI or HDMI?

 

if you have damage to the cable and have digi cable, you will notice what we call digital Pixeling or tiling its little boxes in your picture.That will happen if the cable is cut or exposing the shielding. Most likely if your picture just got darker its not going to be the cable. Down here we bury our cable 6-10 inches depending how hard the ground it. so it is possible that one of the tracks on the bobcat could of damaged it some. I would just have insight come out and replace the drop to your house its a very easy job. By the way I'am a service technician with time warner cable.

 

crafty, using YpBr component cables... already checked to make sure they were secure. They are a cheapo set though, I got them from monoprice.com Chad, bobcat had tires, but they did dig in pretty good, like tractor tires only smaller. I think a tracked bobcat maybe would have been less destructive, maybe not... don't know.

However, I'm thinking now it could be something popped in my TV, a Hitachi 51F59 CRT rear projection HDTV (last of the CRT rear projection breed), its only a yr and half old though. Here's why: Wednesday night I was home alone, veging out in front of tv waiting on wife to get home from a short day trip she had to make on short notice. I kept dozing off (middle age is great, huh) it was raining and some storms had moved through and at one point I heard something behind the Tv go "CLICK" but there was no lightning strike in proximity to it or in the time frame. I didn't bother to investigate because the power didn't appear to have glitched or anything to indicate a surge or dropout, plus the TV was on a Monster HTS400 surge protector only a couple yrs old. Funny thing is I didn't notice the marked change in contrast (white level) and brightness (black level) until yesterday, which of course coincided with the bobcat incident. Its like the picture lost some Gamma or something. Its overall dimmer, both contrast and brightness. Before when all was well I had contrast @ 30 (0 - 100 scale) and brightness @ 56. Now to get the same picture fidelity I have to crank contrast to about 43 and brightness to about 65. I tried taking the Monster HTS400 out of the loop and plugging the TV directly into the wall socket tonight, in case maybe I what I heard was the surge protector sacrificing itself to a surge or spike and it got nuked, but it really didn't improve.

The last possibility is that Insight is messing around with their system and it maybe coincided with these other two events.

I do know that the past month or month and half or so the picture quality in both SD and HD has been great. And they have indicated they're upgrading their network. So who knows. There are worse problems to have than a TV problem for sure.

 

P.S. The DVR is a Motorola DCH6416-- I had a look in the diagnostic menu (power off and hit SELECT within a second or two to bring up menu) and the in-band and out-of-band signal numbers looked comparable to what I remember them looking like when Insight installed us last year. So its looking more like something up with my TV. Knew I should have bought that ext warranty.

Chad-- you're a professional tech so you're the official forum cable tv Guru now!

 

How is the picture quality with a DVD? Any difference?

 

Ranger, you are right on the extended warranty. In this day and age I wouldn't buy anything without it. In the past I would always decline it, but that was before everything started being made in China.

 

from the way you describe it sounds like your tv my be going