I have Comcast HDTV, but somtimes the signal on my HD Channels are digitized and are slow to respond, sometimes I get the message "Please Wait this channel will be available shortly". I currently have a DVI cable from my HDTV DVR Box to my HDTV. I had the componet cables before, but the DVI cable cleared it up some. Could this be my splitter coming into the house, should I have a special splitter for the ouside and for my gang splitter in the basement ? Or is it something completely different. Thanks for your time.

Usually this means the signal is too low for the digital tuner to lock into. Check all your cable ends to make sure they are on right (not loose), bypass whatever splitters you can, and then check to see if you have a good solid picture. If you do, add things back into the system one at a time until you find the problem (it could be an old splitter or just a low signal). If all else fails, call the local cable company and have them bring a drop amp out and check the system.

I just finished a two year feud with Comcast over this issue. Bottom line, it's outside of your house. There's not enough strength in the signal coming in.

Comcast would rather send 100 people 100 times to your home, rather than fix the infrastructure. Find out from your neighbors if they have difficulties with your signal as well and let the Comcast people know. Go through all the proper channels, log everything, and then, if necessary, contact the person in the county government who signs the cable contract. That's what I did. Within 3 days a truck appeared to replace 300 feet of squirrel chewed line along the street - which Comcast was aware of for months. Good luck.

MJC

MJC,

Wow.

I am in awe.

This was the way to handle it, yet so few of us have the tenacity or maintain the details well enough to do it.

Congratulations!

I've noticed in the last few years that I'll see digital breakdown of even what I think are analog signals coming in over the air. With my DirecTV dish, I expect that to happen when storms are in my area and the satellite signal is blocked. What I realized is that the UHF/VHF OTA signals and even cable TV signals are originally sent in digital format via satellite to your local content provider. So if THEY have heavy storms over their satellite dish, everyone watching their signal may witness digital breakdown and "please wait" messages. It can also happen if the original source that is uploading the content to the satellite is blocked by storms. Yes, they have backup and caching strategies in place to deal with these outages, but a long storm can overwhelm most of those.

You may indeed have bad cable somewhere along it's path to your house. But the occasional loss of HDTV over cable is more likely what I've described above. It can also be problems with the decoding equipement at the cable co. source. I know my DirecTV receiver has to be "re-booted" occasionally, so it wouldn't surprise me if there are bugs in the newish HDTV receivers used by the stations and cable companies.

it could be a lot of things. use 1000mhz splitters. dont use rg59 - use rg6quad. Try to limit splitter use. In my area, nothing more than an 8 way will work without an amp. check signal stregnth. in my area, the highest mapped channel is 135. if signal is at least -10 db - its going to work. if everything on your end is ok - then attempt to get comcast to fix it

Also, be carefull with any aps--most of them are junk. You need an amp that offers Zero Return Loss, or else your cable box may not be able to talk back to the cable co. Get a model EDAFT08131 (like 70 bucks from TVC Communications, or 100 on ebay)

", but somtimes the signal on my HD Channels are digitized "

They're always digitized...you mean pixellated.

" You need an amp that offers Zero Return Loss,"

You need an amp witha return path....return loss is an input parameter.