Thats nothing. A builder I work with asked me to come by because his TV needs a firmware update. I have never stepped foot in his house. I look at the TV and check for network settings, there are none. Meaning the TV has no network capabilities, need to download to a USB. I dig deeper to find out that the issue he is having is the picture going out, which he researched and determined it to be a firmware issue.

So I test the TV, while watching, picture goes out. I press a button on the cable remote to see if the menu comes up, sure enough, cable menu. It's a cable issue. Figure bad box, swap it with a box in the other room (house has two cable boxes and one modem, thats it on cable). After swapping boxes, neither box would load. Check signal within the cable boxes menus and both are complete sh*t. WTF. Both had picture before. Check internet, working. One of the cable boxes and the modem are in his den, fed off a two way splitter.

So I go in the basement, I find an 8 way splitter with a cable amp attached. I tone the wires out so I can eliminate the splitter, one of the lines is not toning. Find in another part of the basement another nest of cable wires. The line coming in the house is going to a two-way splitter, then to a 4 way splitter, then off to the 8 way splitter I already found. Again, only 3 devices connected and two of them fed on one line. So we reconfigure so it comes into the house, to a two way splitter, than over to where the 8 way splitter was and just barreled the one line feeding up to the TV. Go upstairs, same thing.

Go outside and check the drop and line coming in. A little corrosion on the ends, so I replaced the fittings and they looked fine, so only the tips had corrosion. Back inside, same thing. Replace two way splitter, check all fittings, same thing. Call Cablevision and they were able to send a hit to one box and wake it up, the one on the same line as the modem. The other box just would not come online. Finally had the guy setup an appointment for cable to check their signal and equipment. I was going to stop by for a half hour and ended up being there for 3+ hours. It will be quite difficult to run a new line to that TV if needed, so I told him to see what Cablevision does/says and we can run a new line next week if needed. Ended up having to race through the back streets to get back to the dealership to get my van that was in for service before they closed. Friday traffic is HORRENDOUS here. Dealership closes at 6pm, I walked in at 5:59pm :-)