Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with coax

How do I rotate a coax feed?

MrMulan — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:29:20 -0800

Can a cable feed be rotated 90 degrees on a monitor if the signal comes in through coax? I need to hang a HDTV vertically and show a live feed. The monitor doesn't have an option to rotate the image. When done with VGA, the video card usually has the utility to rotate the image. Is there an equivalent for coax?

My boss wants it hung vertically for aesthetic reasons.

Migrating cable issues.

CrazyGabby — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:08:56 -0800

Internet connection in one room works fine for several months, then slowly quits. Moving to another room starts the cycle again. We're using a cable modem. Do I have to rewire my house? We've suspected since moving in a few years ago that the cable in our house is, shall we say, less than high quality. Clues are cable box crankiness (with more than one box), horrid performance when using a splitter, etc. Most recently, we've noticed the degrading internet connection. We've replaced both the modem and the router with no luck. We've even tried *cringe* Monster cables, with a bit of temporary improvement. Eventually we are going to run out of rooms to move the modem to.

Is there a fix for this that doesn't involve ripping out the wiring and starting from scratch? And if we *do* have to rewire, what should we to do to keep this from happening again?

Painting Cat5 Cable?

cm — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:02:12 -0800

Do I need to do anything special to apply latex paint to cat5 cable or to coax cable tv cable? Do I need primer or anything of that sort?

Coaxingly close

mike_bling — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:49:04 -0800

Get this coax signal into my computer. I've got an Atari C240 that I want to use in conjunction with some visuals I'm doing on a powerbook. The Atari outputs coax. Ideally, I'm looking for a piece of hardware that will convert coax to DV (say) so the computer recognizes it as a camera. Would something like this do that? Are there other options I've missed? I'd prefer that there weren't any software conversions going on because the video processing that will be happening already is pretty processor intensive. I'm also trying to avoid having to purchase a video mixer, even though that is exactly what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to do any mixing digitally and live using Arkaos, most likely. I know that Arkaos can use a webcam or a DV cam as live input, I'm just wanting to use some older hardware instead. I'm also trying to route the signal through as few potentially screwy pieces of hardware as possible. Thanks for your advice.

Television Control over Cable

ooklala — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:25:40 -0800

How can I have the channel control on my television control a cable box (rather than the television be on channel 3 all the time). I have a cable box that is in a basement (the signal past the splice box is so weak it cannot support digital cable). I want to be able to control the channels of the cable box thru the television (i.e. if I change the channel on the television to channel 60, the cable box will switch to channel 60). The television is out of range for any other solution to work, maybe I could somehow get the signal to run over cable. Any suggestions would help. Maybe there is a box that works over i.r with the cable box?

RG11 vs. RG6

richmondparker — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 07:36:18 -0800

Can I plug an RG11 cable into a VCR, or is the inner wire thicker than regular old RG6 coax? I know this is something that's easy to check, but I'm not close to the problem right now, and was hoping that someone with more knowledge than I might give me a quick tutorial.

Our AV guy is telling me that there's no way to connect it, but I suspect he's not really that into finding a solution. Surely there must be some type of adapter, right?

Windows Media Center Green Screen

Blue Buddha — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 16:20:02 -0800

TV tuner card and Windows Media Center problem with audio only and green screen instead of video. Why? So I installed my HDTV ATSC/NTSC PCI Tuner Card (from Geniatech), and plugged the coax to the card. I receive all the channels, but can only listen to them. The Windows Media Center screen is green.

I'm using Windows Vista and my graphics card is XFX NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 512 MB PCI-E. I doubt it's a performance issue as my PC is running with 2.8 Ghz dual core and 3 GB ram.

Coax cable plugged into the TV works fine, I get my regular cable channels. But no video plugged into the tuner card. Has anyone run into this issue?

Is closed circuit HDTV a possibility?

nickerbocker — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 11:01:57 -0800

Is closed circuit HDTV a possibility? My company has had video upgrades in discussion for a little over a year now and we still haven't found a solution that we are satisfied with. We initially were going towards an all digital camera network run through GigaBitE and Cat6 cable. After looking over some configuration, I have not been all that impressed with the quality or the ease of use.

I have brought up that it is getting to the point that if we are looking at anything new that it should be HD compatible.

From my home use experience I can get HDTV signals through a simple RG59 coax cable that runs from my HDTV (w/ tuner) to my antenna on my roof. I've been very pleased with the quality that comes out of this and am now wondering if implementing something similar for our work camera network is feasible.

My question is, are there any close circuit HDTV setups available on the market today? My vision is to be able to plug in each of our cameras into a encoder/modulator/broadcaster device that is able to set each camera on a digital channel in the VHS band and available to an HDTV tuner on this coax network.

This seems to have 3 big benefits that I can see right now:
1. Our existing camera hardware, even though not HD currently, can be used on this network. Over time we can upgrade cameras to produce true HD video to broadcast on this network.
2. Ease of use for the employees. Everyone knows how to flip through channels on their television and the end result would be a similar interface.
3. I'm assuming that the coax HDTV network can be daisy chained so that the cable goes to each encoder/modulator/broadcast box and out the other end. With the Cat6 network that we were looking at each camera had to have an individual wire going to a centralized gigabit switch. This would mean a lot of wires.

The only downside that I can see to setting things up this way is that the signals will be a one-way thing. W/ the Cat6 network we had the option of pan/tilt/zoom cameras that could be controlled from a monitoring station. This may not be possible with close circuit television.

Thoughts and ideas are really needed badly here. I would also like any links to equipment that has implemented what I have in mind. We may even need a consulting group to bring in on the project so that it is done "right."

Bonus question: what would be a good DVR that has HD tuner capabilities and where video files that are recorded with the DVR are accessible over a computer network? The video files need to be computer accessible as well, as in no nasty DRM on top of the files or a horribly proprietary format. We produce our own video here.

Thanks for all your input!

Ceiling Cable Is Making Me Frustrated.

fandango_matt — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 15:51:21 -0800

Ceiling Cable Is Making Me Frustrated. I need a downstairs coax-cable outlet, but the only outlet in the house is on the second floor. The original owner solved this problem by drilling a hole in the floor and running the coax through it, so the cable now dangles from a hole in the first-floor ceiling. Here's a picture (the cable on the second floor currently runs to a splitter, and then goes into the fire-caulked hole).

1. How do I install a second coax outlet on the ground floor, when the only outlet in the house is on the second floor?

2. Is there a way or a telescoping tool to thread the cable through the wall without tearing out a section of drywall?

3. Recommendations for contractors in or near the East Bay (Berkeley, California) who specialize in this sort of thing would be appreciated.

Coax splitter problems

richmondparker — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 09:35:14 -0800

What can cause a coax splitter to go bad? I've narrowed our connection problems down to this cause, but can't figure out what's causing the cause... Cable and Internet work fine as soon as you replace the splitter. Within a day or so, though, the problem is back. I know it's the splitter because a) I've gone through three of them now, and b) everything works fine FOR GOOD if you just join the coax from the street to an individual line using a female to female splitter. Problems only arise again when you try to split the signal for use with more than one device (say a TV and a cable modem). Any ideas?

Can I add an audio/video source to my cable signal on coax?

gfroese — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 08:51:03 -0800

Short version: Want to piggy back the audio/video output of my receiver onto my cable TV signal. Long version: I want to take the output of my receiver which is in RCA plugs (2 audio, 1 video) and somehow put that onto coax that ALSO contains my basic cable channels. I'm sure I stumbled onto something like this while looking at home automation stuff months ago, but I'm not finding it now. Effectively what I want is to be able to put my receiver's output on channel 100 or something on my coax. This would allow me to split that coax and run it to other TV's in my house and have the output from the receiver available on any TV on channel 100, while still having the regular cable channels available as normal. This will allow me to play Xbox on any TV in my house with my wireless controller. I found this but it only puts the one signal onto coax, it doesn't add it to coax with an existing set of channels. Not what I want, but its the closest thing I've found. Is this even possible or am I dreaming that I have seen this before?

Difference between analog and digital cable signal

ajpresto — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 12:44:30 -0800

My father-in-law just bought a *nice* big TV... That doesn't have anything to do with the question, though. He got an HDTV box and all the digital channels and the HDTV channels come through fine but the analog channels are very snowy. I would expect that the digital channels would pixilate if the coax going into the box is bad. Could this be a splitter/crummy wiring problem? I don't know how the digital channels make it through while the analog channels have horrible quality (some to the point of the TV throwing up a blank screen because of the "snow" effect.