Ah, tech support...

[mapsedge]

The picture on two of our three DirecTV receivers had suddenly gone snowy and I couldn't work out why.  After double checking all of the connections, inserting a new splitter block (to see if the signal splitter was the cause - it wasn't), checking signal strength and dish alignment, I decided a call to technical support was in order.

Support-Guy's name was "Morgan", but we'll call him Bob to protect his privacy. 

I dutifully answered all the questions on Bob's script, learning along the way that I had anticipated every item on his checklist except trying a different type of cable.

Until last night, all my receivers were connected to all the TVs by coax and worked just fine.  I guess something in that chain went bad after a certain length of time - either the coax connection on the receiver or the cable itself.  I don't know.  Switching to component cables made it all better.

Technical question to anyone who'd like a go: what the fuck?  Why would the connection and/or cable suddenly turn to shit after a couple years of working just fine?

But that's not why I'm posting.  I just thought this was amusing:

Bob.  What happens when you turn the TV to channel 4 instead of channel 3?

Me.  Um, I get channel 4.

Bob.  You what?

Me.  I get channel 4, the local Fox affiliate.  Better, in fact, than I do through my DirecTV receiver.  HiDef and everything.  I even watched the Chiefs game on Sunday on channel 5.  In HiDef.

Bob.  But we supply your local stations, how do you..?

Me.  It was actually better when I switched off the receiver.

Bob.  How does that work?

Me.  It's called "broadcast television", which I'm pretty certain still works.

Bob.  (fading fast) Really...

Me.  Yeah.

Bob.  I'll have to look that up...

Comments

[rowangolightly.livejournal.com]

*grin*

Sweetie, you really shouldn't tease the mundanes so; they're just not up to it!

[billthetailor.livejournal.com]

This was only one of two shots I fired across his bow that made him consider changing course. I'll post the other one later if I have time.

[rowangolightly.livejournal.com]

Poor fella....he couldn't have seen it coming.

BTW, do you by chance have a next step for me? No prob if it's not today; I've muchly sewing to do and don't want to bug you.

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

That was hilarious and a picture of things to come. One question: Where do your cables run? Mine did the same thing about a year ago. I had the coax neatly tucked under my carpet, but after a few years of traffic, it seemed the tackstrip had eaten into the cable. Just like sticking a straight pin into it, the signal loss was pretty strong and I had to replace the cable.

[iarraidh.livejournal.com]

Impedence, my boy.
In RF it's all about impedence.
A cable that measures absolutely fine on a meter will change characteristics to aphenominal degree when RF is applied to it.
Odds are the cables were just nominal when installed.
Whatever changed (humidity, static charge, the orientation of the original entrails sacrificed upon installation - you DID sacrifice the entrails, didn't you?), that minor change degraded the cable's characteristics in the RF range.

Having gone through Tech School when they still taught tubes and RF, I have a different view than the Digital Generation reading off scripts.

It ain't all 1's and 0's, Yes and No, Go and NoGo. There's a buttload of Maybe and Almost, finely tuned to specific harmonics and wavelengths.
Just go research wave guides, for instance.
One tick off perfect and you can get trash.

You wanna talk about "magic"? Let's talk about RF.
Fucking spooky.

[ladyniniane.livejournal.com]

Here's a good one to try - go around and loosen and then tighten all of the little screw connectors that fasten the co-ax to the various boxes.

At our old house, we had a cable connection that was near the maximum for optimal signal strength, and it was the connection from the wall to the HD decoder box, so any disturbance in the force could cause that one TV to throw craps.

Fairly early on (after one of the weeklong power outages), the cable tech asked me if we had tried unplugging and re-plugging in the cable. I said that we had removed power, and he said, "No, have you actually uncrewed the co-ax connector?"

Well, no, we hadn't, so I did. And it started working again...

The tech guy said that he had seen that before, especially on marginal connections. Don't know how it gets 'loose', but a take-down, put-up seems to clean it up.