My TV cable service has ceased to work. Comcast is the provider. Inexplicably, cable internet still works, The Televisions are set up through a four way splitter to proviced service to each of the TV’s we have. What might be going on here? I was thinking maybe the cable from the internet filter to the splitter, or the splitter itself may have gone bad, but neither seems that likely as they are just sitting in a utility space no one goes to. Anyone have any ideas. I would really like to be able to watch the olympics.
Internet data is transmitted at a different frequency on the cable lines so I don’t think both have to be working at any given time.
Your cable could just be out, call the company. Most cable companies have techs come by and fix your cable for free.
AFAIK, the only way for the internet to be working while the TV is out is for the cable company to have inserted a blocking filter on your line. If you order cable internet, but not TV, this is how they set up your line. If I had to guess, I’d say there was a billing error on their end (you did pay your bill, right?) Definitely call them and find out what the problem is. Also check with your neighbors and see if their TV is out, too. If theirs is on, then the problem is almost certainly what I described above.
Can I amend the question to my situation?
Seems like almost every day – especially in the summer ---- especially-especially the hotter days ---- – my Comcast internet service goes out completely. I see the modem struggling to regain the signal.
This has happened for a few years now, at both my old house and my current house (in which I’ve been three months now). The first time I called, they swapped my modem, claiming that my “old @Home modem” was at fault. Ha! Next time, the tech swapped a splitter, saying that my splitter (originally installed by Comcast) was a piece of crap. Things never got better, and I learned to just live with it. I’d hate to have VoIP service with this connectivity, though.
Well, yesterday frustrated me enough to call their service again, but I’m hoping someone that knows cable systems can give me some data when I call them. I don’t want another friggin’ modem or splitter that have no idea what time it is. There’s something environmental going on, I think, and it happens at two different houses 10 miles apart. Any ideas?
Ummm, yes I do pay my bill, on time even. Last time I had problems it was because my neighbors canceled their cable, but they unhooked mine, three times in a row. Now, when I look at the box, their cable is connected, with a cylindrical metal, electrical looking device attached to their cable. The cable company says they have no service whatsoever, so I don’t know what is up with that. I spent yesterday at home waiting for service, when at last I called them and they had rescheduled me for today. I don’t know if someone will be home or not but I have talked to someone who said they have had several splitters go bad, and the splitter is attached after the broadband takeoff, so I guess it could be either the splitter or the short cable connecting the broadband takeoff with the splitter. If it is not fixed when I get home (they are checking the outside whether someone is there or not) I guess I will stop at radioshack on the way home from work.
When you say your TVs aren’t working, what do you mean? Are you getting static, a blue screen, an error message?
I work for Comcast in New Jersey and I can tell you that we don’t shut off just the TVs for not paying your bill, we shut down all of your services. Unless you have converter boxes on those TVs…they shut down automatically when the account reaches 60 days delinquent (this number varies from system to system though).
You would get a message on your screen telling you to call your Cable company or something like that.
If it’s static on all the TVS, but the modem works. very often what we do is put one splitter where the cable comes into the house, with one line going to the modem and the other to another splitter that feeds all the TVs. If one leg of that splitter goes bad, you lose all the TVs (or just the modem, depending on which leg went bad).
Every now and then a video filter gets put onto the wrong account (usually because the tag # at the pole or in the pedestal is incorrect). This is rare though, considering that we very rarely get around to putting the video filters even on the accounts that are supposed to have them. But I have seen it happen, and unfortunately a service call is pretty much the only way this gets fixed.
Balthisar–
with regards to your modem problem, I’ve also seen this many times (I’ve worked for Comcast for 7 years in NJ). Typically when modems misbehave at particular times of day, or during particular weather, the problem almost never lies in the house. (I won’t say never, but very rarely). It’s usually caused by noise of some kind getting into the return path, which means there is an ingress/signal leakage problem somewhere along the line. This can be very hard to find…temperature can cause various fittings and stuff to expand/contract, which is one reason why it may happen on hotter days. Other times the source of the noise is something that is only operating at certain times, like perhaps an air conditioner. I recall one account a few years ago that had this problem in December…only at night, but not every night. The problem was traced to electric hum generated by Christmas lights, but since he didn’t put them on every night, it didn’t affect the modem every night, making it very hard to troubleshoot. Once the cable that was allowing the noise to get into the cable plant was replaced, his problem went away.
We also see a lot of problems in the summer time caused by radios used by construction crews working near one of our nodes. The problem is intermittent–only happens when someone keys up the radio too close to the node. And since they only work when the weather is nice, you don’t see the problem during the rain or at night.
The problem we have here is that there are two kinds of service men…those that work on interior/home wiring problems, and those that handle the main lines on the road. A lot of techs have a habit of doing a lousy troubleshooting job and blaming the cabling further up the road at the node or pedestal or whatever, and when the line maintenance techs get the call they find nothing wrong. This has created a situation here where the line maintenance techs got in the habit of almost never believing it when a service man tells them the problem isn’t in the house, because they’ve been ‘lied to’ so many times before. Likewise, so many service techs have had their work orders given back to them by the line techs that they also have gotten frustrated. In short, no department is ever willing to acknowledge that they are the ones responsible for fixing the problem, and work orders get kicked back and forth from one department to the other over and over until some conscientious employee finally decides to start from scratch and really troubleshoot the problem. Unfortunately we don’t have enough of that type of employee.
The three tv’s hooked up to cable all just receive static, although the tv with the shortest in house cable run does receive all the cable stations, albeit with a great deal of static. We do pay our bills, that is not the problem. It must be either outside, the comcast splitter, or my personal splitter.
Definitely sounds like a splitter in the house. If the problem was outside, it’s not likely the modem would still work. In my experience, the modem almost always fails before the TVs do–even though it’s a different frequency, if there’s too much interference in the return path the modem will stop working. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard customers complain when their modem stops working, saying “but I don’t understand, the TVs all work fine”. As though they can make the modem start working again if they reason with it.
Not to say it’s impossible to be an outside problem, but it’s far, far more likely to be a problem with either the splitter, or perhaps with the fitting on the cable running from the splitter, perhaps even that piece of cable itself.