Ceton card pairing failing

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richardtracy

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Ceton card pairing failing

#1

Post by richardtracy » Mon Sep 26, 2011 9:23 pm

Last week Comcast detected a signal leak so they reduced my signal until the signal leak could be repaired. Once they did this I lost my OOB lock and my pairing. The next day I had them come out to repair the leak and they bumped my signal back up, but we could not get the OOB lock to occur. Hed said that one of my amps was causing the issue The card had worked with this cablecard for 6 months prior to this. I had another technician come out and he checked the signal and said it was great. He also did some improvements, removed an uneccesary splitter but we still could not get it to lock on the OOB. The last thing the technician did was replace the cable from the wall to the TV which did not resolve the issue. I then plaed another amp on the line and then the OOB lock happened, but we could not get the piring to occur. On Sunday I had another technician come out with more cable cards and we tried multiple cable cards with no luck, the same issue. We did see the pairing message come up but it went away and diod not successfully pair the card. The technicians now believe that the HDTV cable (the cable between the coax and the Ceton tuner is causing a signal leak and is causing the issue. They said it worked before because I was amping the signal so much it was getting past the signal loss / leak. Ceton support says the diagnostics show that the signal is low getting to the card.

So my first instinct as a troubleshooter is that since the card was working prior to them messing with it, they have not put something back in place that was there before. Comcast feels that I should not need an amp for this. If I plug the cable into my TV is get all the cable channels I should. If I remove the amp my OOB lock goes away and then I reconnect and it works. So it appears to be signal strength related.

Has anyone else seen this before or know where I should go next. On Tuesday Comcast is sending out a supervisor, but my feeling is that he is going to tell me it is my equipment.

Thank you,

Richard Tracy

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Scallica

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#2

Post by Scallica » Mon Sep 26, 2011 9:29 pm

I would suggest connecting your Ceton tuner to the main feed of your residence. Then, take a signal reading and see if you get an OOB lock.
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erkotz

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#3

Post by erkotz » Tue Sep 27, 2011 2:05 pm

Agreed - it sounds like it's already been proven that this is a signal strength issue (adding the amp fixes it) - the question is it a legitimate signal strength issue, or is the cable damaged?
If you have another device that uses a CableCARD, you may want to see if it displays the OOB signal strength in its menus and compare. A common cause of lack of OOB lock issues is customers that have filters of some sort, such as FM traps, on their lines. We also see a lot of poor-quality wiring issues (RG-59. excessive splits, damaged/poorly done wiring), so I'm with Scallica that your best bet is hooking it directly to your cable feed, with no splitters/amps, as a test.
Also remember that it can take a couple minutes to get OOB lock after getting it a valid signal (the frequencies just get scanned until a OOB signal is detected)
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lurch66

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#4

Post by lurch66 » Sat Oct 01, 2011 3:09 am

Something else to keep in mind is the internal 4 way on the Ceton that will lose 7 db from whatever hits it. So I would check the 192.168.200.1 diagnostics page and see what levels it says. Pick one of the 4 tuners and click on the second tab I think it is. Ideally it should be -7 to +7. If it is outside that range that could be your problem. I have also read somewhere else that if the Ceton card is not fully seated in the pci slot it can cause problem's with oob lock as well as moving it to another slot can also help.

Just giving you some other ideas to work with. Hope it helps.

richard1980

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#5

Post by richard1980 » Sun Oct 02, 2011 12:36 pm

It is my understanding that the InfiniTV comes with an amplifier onboard to compensate for the signal loss associated with splitting the signal 4 ways.

erkotz

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#6

Post by erkotz » Sun Oct 02, 2011 3:19 pm

richard1980 wrote:It is my understanding that the InfiniTV comes with an amplifier onboard to compensate for the signal loss associated with splitting the signal 4 ways.
That is correct
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