Oh Dear - Coincidence loosing cable service?

[bdav]

Right, here goes...

My house was a new build, and came with aerial sockets in quite a few of the rooms (2 in living room, 2 in 2 bedrooms, and 1 in kitchen.) All these go up to a splitter (not unlike the cable style ones) up in the loft. This has an input, which is basicly one of the sockets in the rooms, unless i were to get a roof aerial. I was told the general idea was that there are 4 outputs on the splitter, and 5 aerial sockets, so one is used as an input on the splitter (eg. pluging a cable box output into the wall socket in the lounge so all the other sockets get the RF output of the cable box, and possibly the channels from the passthru unit.).

It appears that, shortly after the house was built, NTL installed the main cable box in the lounge. To do this, the cable goes into the steel frame behind the aerial socket nearest to the green breakout box on the side of the house, and turns towards the other aerial socket on the far side of the room. Here, they disconnected the lead going to the roof, and connected their cable, just leaving the old roof cable tied in a knot inside the steel frame.

This was all fine - up untill the time when I get round to setting up the socket splitter thingy. ((I should probably point out that when they installed digital cable (originaly had analogue), they did not change the standard RF style socket to an F type - which i believe they should have done.)), i removed the fascia from the aerial socket by the NTL STB, and put an end on the tied up cable, connecting it to the RF output of the STB.

To find out which socket it was in the roof, I took a tv up, and tried each lead in turn untill i found the right one. Then I disconnected all the leads, plugging in only the STB input, and the output to the rooms I wanted for simplicity.

This all seemed fine. Untill i decided I would rather have the kitchen STB providing the input(dont ask!). So disconnected output from lounge STB, and connected kitchen STB. All fine. Except no picture on lounge STB any more.

All connections in wall plate are fine. Def. right lead connected. Have tried plugging lead into radio, as this usualy works giving a good signal quality - nothing - 0/50 signal on the radio. Its allmost as if the cable has been disconnected at the other end. All other STBs / SACMs working. Checked the green box on the outside of the house - it appears the lid thing has fallen off - a bit damp, but all connections tight....

Any ideas? Im sure NTL would not wire the cable feed up into the loft and into a distributor, so I am pretty sure that has nothing to do with it. The splitter wrong too (7.? dB per socket), where the others are about 3 (i think). I am at a loss as to what has happened. Has any one else had NTL wire the cable up to an odd place, then back down again?

[MovedGoalPosts]

I'm confused. How many STBs do you have. Each should have their own direct cable feed from the external wall box. Is that the case.

As for internal wiring, if you have a splitter in the loft, and have changed the input signal carrier wire, then you may need to change the splitter connections so the new feed from the kitchen is in the right port.

[bdav]

I Have done that - what I wanted to establish was wether NTL would wire the main cable feed up to there - but I am pretty sure this is not the case.

We have 3 (soon down to 2) STBs. The Study STB is a wire straight from the distr. box on the outside, the lounge one ( as far as i can tell) goes allmost straight in, then through the cavity wall (cant be sure), and the kitchen one goes from the distro box, allong the side of the house, and then in.

I have tried swapping the lounge and the kitchen lead on the distro box outside - kitchen stays on, lounge stays off. Have tried another STB in the lounge.

[MovedGoalPosts]

A clue might lie in the incorrect cable adaptor on the living room wall. If this was never made securely, and a wire has now detached, the STB won't get a signal.

[bdav]

Am i right in thinking that the socket should have been of the screw-fit presentation?

[bdav]

Rightey....... I think there may be a bill waiting for me......

NTL tech came today (someone else was here to let him/her(???) in). They said they needed to get up to the roof - I assume to the distributor I was playing about with - but why would they distribute the raw cable signal round the house? I've tried to put it back as best as i can. Anyways - I have to book the eng. tomorow. Would it not be easier just to run a new cable 3m allong the outside wall from the splitter box on the outside of the house? If they want to charge for this, what kind of price am I looking at? Its v. annoying - I dont know why on earth they would mess around in the roof of the house.

So - anyone have any ideas on charges?

[bdav]

Rightey - the eng come yesterday. He said the cable shouldnt be running up there, but it is, and its not compatible with their networks, so needs replacing.

So - it was my fault, but it was their fault first (sort of!)

Is it normal that they need to book another appointment to run a new cable? For now they've given me one huge length of cable to plug it into the other room.

[Stu038]

Part of the problem is that when house builders put multiple TV points into a house they generally use the cheapest components possible. Including the coaxial cable. The Cable system relies on a much more expensive type of coax with better screening.

Cheap poorly shielded coax dosn't matter as much with analogue off air channels, because in many cases the stuff getting into the cable is what you want to watch anyway.

The problem is that these same signals play havoc with cable TV especially digital, so its rare for any existing coax to be used, it does sometimes happen though lazy installers, custs not wanting any more wires around the house, or customers themselves playing after install

Unfortunately the service techs these days don't get much time per job so most new or replacement cable runs get passed back to an install crew