Cable TV weirdness

March 4, 2008 9:22 AM

Why is my cable TV signal acting differently and is this just me/just my provider?

For the past 2-3 months I have noticed some changes to my TV signal, I have plain cable but no cable box. I'm wondering if this makes sense to anyone else.

The changes are;

1. Commercials are now much, much louder than programs; since the dawn of time this has been true but in the past few months the difference has become so great that my wife and I have to dive for the remote whenever one comes on because it blasts out as twice the volume of the show we were watching.

2. Audio/video unsynced; more and more often this is happeneing, sometimes the audio is as much as a second out of sync with the video, this seems worse on some channels than others.

3. Shows cut off at the end; more and more often shows are cut off before they finish, the most consistant one is Letterman, the last 2-4 minutes of the show are replaced with any number of other shows that I have never heard of.

4. Digital type interference; sometimes the video but most often the audio is garbled in that "digital interference" way, just for a split second at a time, the most consistant case is the first split second of each commerical or each show when it comes back from commercial, there is always a little, quick glitch of garbled audio, it's so short my wife didn't even notice it until I pointed it out.

Is anyone out there seeing any of these symptoms or am I losing my mind.. or both? Perhaps they are getting sloppy due to the looming darkening of analogue cable?

posted by Cosine to media & arts (14 comments total)

Comcast, right?

I've noticed the increased commercial volume of late, myself. It seems more pronounced on certain networks, though. FX seems to be the most egregious offender.

As for the sound sync issue and the digital artifacting, you are, in fact, seeing some problems with the original digital signal and/or the conversion to analog. Comcast receives all their programming via digital transmission. They then convert it to analog signal for luddites like you and me. It's a dirty truth about digital that it isn't always perfect. Artifacting, audio sync issues, etc. can happen. Heck, I've seen whole channels on Comcast just freeze in blocky, artifacted glory for hours at a time. Growing pains, I guess.

And, yes, a lot of this has to do with Comcast's impending elimination of analog service (unrelated to the end of broadcast analog. Merely coincidental). Haven't you noticed the occasional disappearance of a channel or two as they move them exclusively to digital? Most recently, we lost C-SPAN2 and, of all things, the TV Guide channel.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:37 AM on March 4, 2008

Not Comcast, I'm in Canada and the cable provider is Shaw, everything you described is correct too, channels moving around a lot/disappearing/reappearing.
posted by Cosine at 9:45 AM on March 4, 2008

Something is definitely going on with commercials on my local CBS and Fox stations, but only if I watch them over cable. Over-the-air is normal.

This is with Cox cable.
posted by aerotive at 10:24 AM on March 4, 2008

I actually just had some shaw techs out this morning to fix signal quality problems I was having on both my digital and analogue connections. Turns out a squirrel had chewed through the insulation on the line and water had gotten into the box and was messing with things. Service calls are supposed to be included in your monthly rate, so give them a call!

Also, analogue cable is NOT going down. Analogue over the air broadcasts are ending, at least in the states. I'm not sure if/when Canada will follow suit, but it probably won't be that long. Cable TV gets to you through the physical cables and is not affected by the cease of analogue transmissions.

Many cable companies are using this confusion to sell people digital packages that they don't actually need.
posted by jjb at 10:32 AM on March 4, 2008

I got curious and did a little more research on Canadian analog transmission. It looks like the CRTC has decided that August 31, 2011 will be the date that all broadcasters will be digital. Again, this shouldn't have any impact on the signal from the cable companies, this will only be noticed by the folks that still use antennae.
posted by jjb at 10:37 AM on March 4, 2008

Ah, Canadian television.

The Comedy Network has always had the loud/quiet issue, and the CBC has recently become badly infected. I have a feeling it's a result of the old baby-boomer techs retiring in one massive flood, and being replaced by recent community college graduates who don't know what they're doing.

The phenomenon you mention, about the end of one show being cut off? That's just an ever-so-fun artifact of what I like to call "channel jacking." (There's probably an actual term for it, but whatever.) Basically, if your Canadian channel has bought the rights to an American show, you have two options: 1) Get the source, insert your commercials, and air it whenever you want (This is better for the viewer; CBC always does it; CTV usually does; Global, almost never); or 2) hi-jack the broadcast from an American network, cover over their little station ID in the corner with your own, and sloppily insert your own commercials over theirs; this is cheaper, less labor intensive, and entirely contemptible.

That second method would explain why the last few minutes of Letterman get lost in the shuffle: The Late Show starts at 11:35 and endas at 12:35; the Canadian network that's hijacking it probably has their heads up their asses and another show that starts at 12:30 sharp.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:51 AM on March 4, 2008

I'll chime in about the commercials. The sound seems louder because the marketers use a nice compression trick to keep the commercials within the allowed range while getting the maximum overall volume. You can read more about it here and here. It's not something the cable company is doing and it's something all of us experience and I would hazard that most of us are annoyed with.
posted by chrisroberts at 10:56 AM on March 4, 2008

I have a feeling it's a result of the old baby-boomer techs retiring in one massive flood, and being replaced by recent community college graduates who don't know what they're doing.

Or, alternatively (maybe additionally), human error related to a recent advance in technology.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:56 AM on March 4, 2008

Nope, I understand the 11:35 issue and this isn't it, it's never as much as 5 minutes, usually more like 1 minute, and it's random shows that come on, just the end of them as well... usually it's some show called Chelsea Lately.
posted by Cosine at 10:57 AM on March 4, 2008

The bit about the analogue darkening only affecting OTA cable is news to me, thanks very much for that, I had no idea.
posted by Cosine at 10:57 AM on March 4, 2008

Also, analogue cable is NOT going down...
Not true.
Comcast is currently in the middle of migrating its analog channels over to digital cable. This is, as I stated above, totally unrelated to the upcoming 2009 elimination of OTA analog. But, that doesn't mean that analog cable is here to stay.

Comcast has been regularly moving channels off their analog service over the past year or so. They will continue to do so. From what I've been able to gather in their user forums, Comcast looks to have everything migrated over to digital by 2011 or so. A long time out, to be sure. But, by then, their analog service might be whittled down to a mere dozen channels remaining.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:10 AM on March 4, 2008

Thorzad, is this part about Comcast even relevant as the OP doesn't even have Comcast?
posted by booticon at 12:11 PM on March 4, 2008

booticon...I was replying to jjb's comment that analog cable wasn't going down (which i assumed was a reply directed to my earlier comment)

The OP did not, initially, mention their cable provider.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:53 PM on March 4, 2008

What's happening is that the cable companies are switching their networks from all coaxial, to fiber to the neighborhood, and then coaxial to the houses. Upside, better quality,more options, etc. Downside, if the little box on the pole that converts the fiber signal to the coaxial signal starts to go funny, you're going to have weird problems. Or a similar digital to analog problem further up the line.

The programs being cut off is caused by either your local TV network or your cable company. They like to insert their own commercials or even their own infomercials.
posted by gjc at 8:27 PM on March 4, 2008