Thanks for this info. I was having problems with a particular channel, and I
was able to go in and find our QAM level was -15. Cranked up the gain on
my amp to maximum, which got me to -5, and things got better but not great.
I have a higher gain amp I will have to try, but I had to take it out because when we first got HD I had too much signal. But at least I can find the level now if I need to.

Wow, six and a half years later, certain button pushes on the front of a cable tuner and you get the same results!



12au6, how come not 12au7?

first of all did you put your own connectors on the cable if so are they store bought twist on, are they crimp, are they compression? have any of the service call techs pulled the wall plates and checked the fittings, do they have suck outs? have they checked for kinks in the cable? when you ran you own cable did you step on it in the attic? Did the die-electric get crushed? If you change the ohms on coax it is ruined, coax must be 75 ohms. you could have good signal despite all these potential problems. another problem is you do not know if your provider is all digital, are they analog? this creates more questions. i know i know. you are thinking it is digital because i have a dct. not true. too many varying factors for you average diy cable guy. Cable is no longer just hooking shit up. it has become much more than that. feel free to ask away i will answer your questions.

Hello, j3comm.

Please tell us how you came to comment on this thread. I'm dying to know just how it is that almost every new member manages to dredge up a conversation so old that it probably doesn't matter any more. We who have been here for a while see this over and over. What doesn't the new person know that makes them not notice how old the conversation is?

Did you read Post 32 and notice that the original issue is more than six years old?

Of course, it just hit me that we here feel we are in conversations in the present tense, needing information right away rather than for the ages. Maybe the new member feels differently about it.

Anyway, welcome, but some people here will get ticked off at you if you bring a lot of old threads back to life.

Meanwhile, since you took the time:

We're all trying to read here and understand your points. Please take the time to capitalize the first word of each sentence. The occasional paragraph break is welcome, too.  Please don't think I'm being hard on you -- just look at how others behave here, and join in!


First of all, did you put your own connectors on the cable?  If so, are they store bought?  Twist-on?  Crimp? Compression?


Ever since I heard a cable tech talk about the danger of suck-outs, I've being dying for a rigorous explanation of what they are, what they do, and how bad they can be without bothering anything. I have found that when the dielectric is not fully seated (AKA a suck-out), the system works just fine, but the connector is not mechanically as strong as it should be. Yes, that tiny space is not 75 ohms impedance, but speaking practically, I've not seen a problem.  They are to be avoided but rarely can be blamed for anything.


Die-electric. That's a good one.  RG6 is so large that kinks are almost impossible not to notice.  If someone has missed a kink, they are likely so clueless that they should be banned from the job or closely supervised.


Ohms as you use it is called impedance. Calling it ohms is like saying PSI when you want to talk about pressure. Pressure is the general concept, PSI the exact number and units. Coax can withstand being stepped on, too.


Absolutely. In fact, you WILL have good signal despite these potential problems.  If they are potential, by definition they are not actual problems at this time.


Wait -- how do we know what you have?  I'm thinking you mean a cable box that's a DCT something, right?


Thank you!

If anyone ever kills the heavy cable coming from the pole to a house, like a local landscaper's helper did yesterday, UHF connectors work. This happened about 60' from the demarc box and T-W ran the cable diagonally from the pole, across the ysrd, turned left and went up right next to the meter box. Why they didn't go straight to the same point, I don't know- it would have been a direct path. Anyway, it seemed logical that the landscaper told his helper where to dig for the concrete pad that's being poured for a shed, thinking that the cable wouldn't be there. It was also laid on top of the soil, just under the sod. Two freaking inches deep! Then, the cable guy showed up today and acted like a dick.

Anyway, I was called to see if I could make a temporary connection until today because everyone in the house is addicted to cable and the internet. I made the connection (screw-on ferrule and soldered center conductor- haven't seen this kind of cable since C-band) and when I went inside, all of the cable channels worked, including HD and the internet connection worked with good speed. I didn't do a connection speed test but everything went from page to page as well as I could have hoped for.

Carry on, Montescue.

Regading the comment on impedance two posts ago, see this about the UHF connector from Wikipedia:


That's worse than any suck-out, and yes, it will work.


There's a number to call before digging, and some places even put up bulletin boards. It's 811 or www.call811.com/. Maybe the cable guy was a dick because he's a dick AND he had to do this service call that might have been avoided.



From The Spirit of The Laws, Montesquieu, 1748. I LOVE it when someone here makes me look something up and learn!

WOW!, That was three houses ago. The problem was solved once I found the proper tool (actual knowledgable cable guy). We were out at the street pondering the situation and he deciced for the hell of it to open the box at the demarc. The water poured out as he pulled off the cover.It looked like a coral reef in there.

In continuance of the pondering he thought we should check the next box at the neighbors house. The water poured out. We did this through the neighborhood untill we got to the main above ground box. Total of 6 or 7 boxes full of water. After all was fixed the neighbors were joyus, evidently a problem for a very long time. My persistance paid off for everybody and I picked up a couple neighbors whom had me wire their theaters for them (very basic).

Once that was fixed i had to spend a weekend redoing the wiring in the can to make it look all pretty again.

The subject of the connectors came up way back at the beginning. I used compression fittings, installed properly. One of the knucklhead cable guys tried to tell me it was my connectors. The cable was theirs off their own truck. So i said since you brought it up, you can terminate them with your own. So I watched him and made him do them all. Pissed him off but hey, I wanted to remove all doubt. After that waste of time and MY money, what a shock no change.

I am glad that my persistace benifited others, as well as the information i gained from those here.

Very interesting thing in this thread is, guess who was the first one to mention WATER,.....wait for it......wait for it........M. Stanley!

P.S. Ernie we must break bread. There was no way I was going to make it out to LA from Laguna Niguel that night beforer 10:00 PM and then turn around and drive back home. Wanted to meet Brent also.

I just reread this whole thread. We sure as hell outputted a hell of a lot of hifalutin technical knowledge trying to solve a problem as old as the hills: too damn much rain in the wrong place!

From Post 18: It was an Adelphia system! That just points out that we should savor every stupid idiotic thing we run across, because some day we will reminisce and say "2012 -- wow, the good old days!"


I've designed antenna systems, always shooting for an absolute minimum of 0 dB at the TV, as that gave complete quieting of an analog system, but I usually presented +10 and never had a problem.

Cable boxes don't work quite the same, of course, but there's no way they could work properly over only that tight of a signal range.

And isn't it odd that we get pissed off at newbies when they dredge up old threads, when really we should be irritated with ourselves when we join in without noticing how old they are!

I see the comments concerning how old parts of this thread is. But actually, I had to search google for " signal strenght cable " AND THIS SITE CAME UP. I read everything and I have to say it has been most informative. I too am a tools junkie and would have easily paid $500 to $1,000 for the right tools to help me with my problem. I have run all new RG6 over the last several years., invested in high end powered spliter off the main feed. No matter what I do, periodically the weak signal issue comes back. In addition to Brighthouse Box's I have 2 Ceton Corp PCIe 4 tuner PCIe boards running on PC's on my network.

In any event, your thread has been most helpful for me in deciding what my next steps will be to isolate my problem. So, Thank You Guys for all the help and expertise. Best Regards: Gene

Thanks, Gene. If I remember correctly, you are the first new member I've seen come along, acknowledge that he's commenting in an old thread, not argue with the answers, and generally have a positive attitude. And you're a new enough member that you haven't gotten sarcastic yet. (See? Light sarcasm.) It's refreshing. If there's anything else we can help you with, come back.

And, hey, no excuses needed. The owner of the site has managed to make just about any topic EVER discussed here come up through a google search. That is wonderful.

The amusing thing is that if a new member brings up something old, we sometimes get irritated because we (it's our own fault) don't LOOK at the thread to see how old it is; then we try to help someone who no longer needs the help.

You mean, climb the pole/use a ladder and connect to their splitter? Because it's A) not the cable company's pole, B) it's not legal to tap into the utility's feed without authorization and C) if someone goes up there and falls/hurts someone else, it's a big liability problem. Also, somewhere, a lawyer would love to see the advice you gave because he/she wants to sue the crap out of someone.

I only put the UHF connector on as a temporary "get it connected until the cable guy shows up tomorrow" step.

The cable guy WAS a dick, according to my friend, the landscaper. Steve gets along with everyone and he wanted to deck the guy. He knows about Digger's Hotline but the idea that the cable would have crossed that way seemed so unlikely, AND it seemed completely unlikely that it would have been buried only as deep as the sod. Whoever laid the sod may have un-buried it and/or cut it when they worked their magic- hard to say without having been there- I was called after it was cut.

"Carry on, Montesquieu".

Yeah, it's an old thread but maybe we should create a stickied thread that lists the problems that were caused by the cable/phone installers/companies, for future reference, like using copper-clad steel cable with tight bends/kinks, cheap F connectors, no moisture seals on exterior splices/splitters, stupid cable routing, leaving the demarc box open (like the one where I installed the UHF terminals), etc.

Time Warner has a diagnostic channel but it doesn't necessarily show signal strength, although it does show network connectivity, IP address, etc. It's channel 1900.

Does that diagnostic channel show the situation at that particular cable box? If so, it could easily show signal strength... if it could tune 1900 while tuning another channel... so maybe it's not possible without making a much pricier box.

Not sure which boxes it works with but on the Samsung, it shows the IP info. Next time I'm in the same place as a Scientific Atalanta or the Cisco beanded one, I'll try it to see the difference.

I'm pretty sure they just don't like to give out the info- I asked a T-W installer and he told me about that channel. It would really make sense to be able to measure signal strength by using the box- it eliminates any loss from inserting another device inline.