Help me hook up my digital cable

Factual Questions
1

My old digital converter box went dead the other night. I just picked up a new one today and have been trying to hook it up with no success.

Here’s what the back of my cable box looks like. There are 5 coaxial cable jacks.

1 3 5

2 4

1 - RF In
2 - To Cable-In
3 - A
4 - B
5 - RF Out

Now, the way I currently have it is I have the two coax cables that come from the wall going into A and B. All three of the techs I have worked with on the phone agree it’s supposed to go there. Things diverge after that, mainly because none of them seem to have a diagram of my cable box, they describe cables by spatial relations that do not apply to mine - there is no little plug above my A and my B, all the jacks are either to the left or the right of it, as you can see in my diagram.

I have the cable that goes to my television from the RF Out. I know this is right.

Now, the first technician I talked to had me run a little 3 inch coax cable between the RF In and the To Cable-In. The next technician with an opinion regarding this said that the little cable went from the A to the To Cable In, and that the two cables from the wall went into B and Rf In. Both ways I get a picture from basic cable if the cable box is turned off, but if the box is on I get the guide graphics and menus, but white noise on the display and sound, no picture at all.

Is there anyone out there who can help me? They can’t get a tech out until the 28th, and my Mom will drive me crazy if we have no TV until then.

2

I unhooked mine to move it to a different location and had to get one of the kids in here to reprogram something or other.

3

“A” and “B” are two different cable inputs. [Both are usually RF modulated cable signals. Older systems used two cables, for more channels under the older, cheap analog tuners. They can now be repurposed with newer signals, including 1GHz or digital signals]

“RF in” refers to signals from your antenna or the RF out from your VCR or other video device, like DVD

“Cable in” is usually a cable-modulated RF modulated input. Cable modulation assigns each channel a consistent badwidth across the allowable spectrum from 54 MHz to as much as 900 Mhz or 1 GHz. Broadcast channels were assigned in a slapdash manner in whatever bands were available when more channels were needed. Cable channels can occupy the whole range, because the cable only carries cable signals. Most modern TVs have digital tuners that can operate in either ‘cable’ or (broadcast) ‘TV’ modes, but the Cable In can be used as an input for other cable devices, like decoders

I’m assuming that all five inputs you describe are threaded ‘F’ connectors (commonly used for RG-59 or RG-6 cable)

Without knowing what town, cable carrier or digital box you have (read the backplate), I can only guess that the digital tuner can handle two cable systems, but both cables may not be used by your cable carrier (any more, or ever).

If you have one incoming cable, hook it to A; if that doesn’t work, hook it to Cable In. I prefer to use a splitter to split the signal from A/B to the VCR (using a A/B switch, since most VCRs have one RF in) and then run the RF out to the ‘Cable in’ on the box. This lets me watch cable, while recording a different cable channel, but overrides the Cable 3/4 with Channel 3/4 from the VCr during playback.

It’s more likely that your TV (etc.) isn’t set properly. If you examine the menus or controls, you may find a setting with labels like “TV”. “Cable”, “HRC”, or “IRC”. In teh US, you should most likely set this to “cable”. HRC and IRC are two other cable standards which share the lower channel bands with ‘standard cable’ but not all of them.

I’m sorry I can’t be more specific. Knowing the model or seeing a picture of the back plate/connectors would be a big help

4

Oops - forgot to mention that “RF out” goes to your TV. Tune the TV to channel 3 as a ‘common denominator’ as you change settings.

5

Yeah, the TV is getting input from the cable box - the menus and TV guides come up fine.