I have Spectrum (formerly TimeWarner Cable), and over the past maybe 6 months have been frustrated immensely by an issue with missing channels on all 3 of our cable boxes.
Starting in the mid-1200 range, several but not all channels can be tuned in to the extent that I can enter the channel number and the box will go to that channel, with a banner showing what channel I’m on and what’s playing, but with a black screen where the content of the channel should be. This is not the normal “WTVI is not currently available, try again later” error message: just a black screen, like the cable box thinks it did its job and then forgot to actually bring me the channel I want.
On VERY rare occasions I can flip back to the previous channel and back again a few times and it will clear up. Sometimes I can “channel down” to a working channel and back up and it will clear up. But mostly, nothing works. Rebooting the cable box works sometimes.
Last weekend, we finally had a technician come out to look at it. She found that the signal outside is great, but the signal at the cable boxes was crap (I think I heard her telling someone on the phone “+10” outside and “-9” inside, but if that doesn’t make sense, I either heard wrong or am misremembering). She replaced all the cable from where the line from the pole arrives at the house to all three cable boxes. She replaced a splitter where the cable in one room feeds my cable box and my cable modem. And when she was all done, it worked on every cable box. She left, then we left to go get lunch, and when we came back, it was right back to where it had been before.
Obviously, I need to call Spectrum back again. But I wanted to be armed with ideas to suggest or questions to ask that might actually get this resolved. Thanks in advance!