The importance of good cabling

[Martyn]

Hi,

I recently did some remodeling work on the wall on which my plasma hangs. I am cutting the gyprock sheeting to allow me to run the power and video cables in the wall space.

Everything went according to plan, but when I reconnected my antenna cable to the BW I was getting the dreaded 'no signal detected" message

I have quad core coaxial cable througout the house, and knew that wasn't causing the issue. After much cursing I re-checked the connections all to no avail.

As it turned out the antenna patch lead was dodgy, although I had been using it continually without issue since I got the BW (6 months ago).

It all goes to show how critical a simple cable is to the quality of the picture.
Lesson Learnt: Use quality cables and always ensure they are connected properly, before blaming the BW.

Martyn

[DaveR]

This reminds of numerous people, with picture quality or reception problems, who swore black and blue that the cause of the problem could not possibly be their < insert A, B or C here > cable(s).

A. Brand New
B. Mega Expensive
C. Previously Working

Only when they later gave in and tried a different cable do they discover that it was the cable... Or at the very least, their cable was no longer firmly plugged in.

[sub3R]

?. As it turned out the antenna patch lead was dodgy, although I had been using it continually without issue since I got the BW (6 months ago).

It all goes to show how critical a simple cable is to the quality of the picture.
Lesson Learnt: Use quality cables and always ensure they are connected properly, before blaming the BW.

Cables & connections are usually the first thing to check when fault finding. Actually the first thing to check is the last things that were changed, disturbed or maintained.

[brianh]

with a career in electronics behind me, one thing we learnt as troubleshooters was to suspect EVERYTHING - especially your own work. Never assume that something is good because you've just bought it, always try to eliminate every part of a system as the cause and it's always good to have someone else double check what you've done in case you've incorporated the mistake into your thinking.

I remember a VDU I was fixing once, replaced the driver transistor and it still showed exactly the same fault. Tried several other tranny's from the new batch, turns out all of the new transistors were faulty which had me looking at all different areas of the circuit... had to buy another new batch from somewhere else which finally fixed the problem... Of course, I can look back now & laugh....

/pointless ramble mode off.......

[Para Dox]

Martyn said:

Lesson Learnt: Use quality cables and always ensure they are connected properly, before blaming the BW

I'll second that ....

..... I thought that the cause of my occasional picture blockiness, audible pops, and momentary freezes, was the Beyonwiz P1 ...... after-all ..... the signal strength and quality readings were OK ..... and the TV, Foxtel IQ, dual tuner SD PVR, and dual tuner PC HD tuner card did not exhibit these problems .....

Infrastructure:
1960's apartment block, with original 1960's coax cabling, 8 apartments per cable drop, a new Teledyne masthead amplifier/splitter, and new VHF and UHF antennas.

Within my own apartment, I had upgraded all my coax cables to expensive new Arista "High Performance" OFC dual shielded cable, and the problem persisted.

I installed a Kingray SA164 4-way amplifier/splitter ..... because there are 11 tuners in my system, and the load-limit is 4 tuners per outlet.

I installed a Hills 520MHz high-pass filter. I did this to filter out all the annoying poor reception VHF channels which fill the channel lists with duplicate unusable channels, but was surprised to see the Wiz signal strength and signal quality bars also improve.
You could also try this diplexer: http://www.academytv.com.au/category16_1.htm

What finally nailed the last of the problems .....

..... was replacing some of the expensive Arista "High Performance" cables with cheaper Dick Smith quad-shield RG6 coax cables with the noise filters on each end like some computer monitor cables have. These were only 2/3's of the cost of the Arista cables. The TV signal coming into the apartment passed by the fridge, so the Dick Smith cable eliminated the electrical noise from the fridge compressor turning on/off. Then I replaced the 5m Arista cable between my computer and the rest of the AV equipment with a 5m Dick Smith cable, and the last of the problems went away.

.... and now I am living happily ever after in HD TV heaven ....

[Half Round]

Martyn said:

Lesson Learnt: Use quality cables and always ensure they are connected properly, before blaming the BW

I'll second that ....

..... I thought that the cause of my occasional picture blockiness, audible pops, and momentary freezes, was the Beyonwiz P1 ...... after-all ..... the signal strength and quality readings were OK ..... and the TV, Foxtel IQ, dual tuner SD PVR, and dual tuner PC HD tuner card did not exhibit these problems .....

I'll third that....
Had a similar problem here. All channels are UHF. Everything started OK but all of a sudden one channel began pixellating badly with poor signal quality and high strength. Played with the cables and the problem went away. However it kept reoccurring over time. I found that internally the wall socket (PAL type) was the old style with the cable terminated under screws with the inner core unshielded for approx 1cm. Replaced this with an 'F' shielded connector and have not had another problem. All signals are strong and stable with no interference problems.

Tony