Or more specifically, my digital cable boxes…
When we experience a power failure (due to a storm, etc.) the digital cable receiver boxes have to sort of reset themselves. So, the first time we turn on the t.v. after a power failure, the box is tuned to channel 01 and switching to any other channel results in an on screen dialog something to the effect of “Accessing WABC…Please Wait”. It takes several seconds before this dialog disappears and t.v. viewing returns to normal.
Under normal circumstances I will either be fully aware of the power failure and the t.v. thing will be of no surprise, or I will not notice the failure (because I’m away from home or asleep or whatever), but it will be evidenced by, among other things, all of the clocks flashing “12:00”.
Recently, however, I’ve noticed that the cable boxes will frequently behave as if a power failure has occurred when in reality, one has not. They do the whole reset thing, but near as I can tell, we never lost power.
In fact, just last night I was watching the news in bed and shut the t.v. off to go to sleep. Just as I began to drift off, I was awakened by a “click-click-click” and glanced over at the cable box. The LED display, which normally displays the channels and time, was dark - then displayed channel 01 - then diplayed the time. But nothing else seemed to be affected - i.e. the clocks weren’t flashing “12:00” or anything - so I’m assuming we didn’t lose power. But, sure enough, when I got up the next morning and switched the t.v. on - it did the reset thing.
Only thing I can think of is that these things are super-sensitive to a decrease in power and when the central air-conditioning switches on (which does have the effect of dimming the lights in the entire house for a very brief period) they lose their digital signal - or whatever.
Any thoughts?