Well we had our digital box upstairs, a fairly long cable run from where it enters the house, and we never did get digital cable, and over time it deteriorated so that eventually we could get only five channels and those badly.
So I moved the box to the basement where it is about 10 feet from where cable enters the house. Now we get all the digital cannels, but the guide does not work, it only says “To be announced” for every single show at every single time.
There is a TV guide button on the digital box but it just says “This show should be ready shorltly.” Am I doing something wrong, is there something wrong with the cable, or is the digital box bad?
Comcast is the provider by the way. I could call them up but think I am more likely to get decent advice from you folks.
When my digital cable box (TimeWarner) does stuff like that, I unplug it for 30 seconds or so and then plug it back in to reboot it. I was told once to be sure to unplug the cable from the back of the box, not at the outlet. Apparently, unplugging at the outlet won’t trigger the same reinitialization routine, it will just be interpretted as a power outage.
Are you splitting it in the house? I had my cable box, TiVo, and cable modem plugged into a 4-way splitter, and I couldn’t get high channels or PPV movies. I just switched to a 3-way splitter (no extra end), and it’s all fine. If you’re splitting, you may want to get an amplifier; they’re not that expensive on eBay. If you’re not splitting, you might want to try it; in my last apartment, the cable was coming in strong, and the cable guy slapped a big-old splitter on there to turn it down. And I’d replace the inside run if you want to move the TV back.
I’d ask the cable company to check your wiring and signal levels. There are splitters and other widgets that can cause problems because they have inadequate frequency range or they block the frequencies used for upstream communication by digital cable boxes and internet cable modems. They are usually happy to replace the junk that you bought at Radio Shack with their own parts, which are of higher quality. They are legally liable for leakage from the cable system that causes interference with other services, so it’s in their best interest to fix any problems with substandard hardware and cabling in the subscriber’s home.