Cable Co. claims this was my fault:

[zenith2134]

One of my digital-cable STB's has been frequently rebooting and displaying error messages (about once every 2 hours). SO they send someone over, and he claims the box was 'going into high-temperature shutdown' because my TV was old and gives off too much heat. Boy, glad it was an SS set...he would've been calling the fire dept. if it was a tube set. But I mean COME ON....Ambient room temperature is at 71F, I had nothing on top of the cable box, and it was sitting right atop the tv (1982 GE).

Plus, I've had the same box paired with the same TV for almost a year now. Well, at least he gave me a brand new box (a Samsung) without much ado.

But doesn't this sound unlikely?

[zenithfan1]

It was not your fault, your cable company is retarded. Those boxes are the worst chinese junk they can force on everyone, I've had several fail like yours. The same thing with all the rebooting and mine froze a lot. Glad they gave you a new box like they're supposed to.

[MRX37]

Cable box quality has gone down in the last decade. I have one that I need to keep turned off, or unplug it and plug it back in if I leave it on just so on demand will work.

[radiotvnut]

That's a load of bullcrap. Like has aready been said, those boxes are not of the best quality anyway. And, I've seen some STB's that actually ran hotter than the TV it was sitting on.

I have not had any personal experience with the new digital cable boxes and don't plan to as long as analog cable service is available. Don't know how much longer that will last as they just dropped 4 channels from the analog package and will probably be dropping more until it gets to the point where only local channels + 2 or 3 others will be on analog (Ch. 2-13).

[zenith2134]

Glad i'm not crazy, thanks guys! Around here the analog signal has gotten very noisy over the years; my guess is that they are just letting it die and aren't maintaining it. I don't think it's my house connection since it was redone once or twice. Shame since a box-less setup works wonders on 80's sets with electronic tuners...especially after the dtv switchover

[radiotvnut]

I just use the VCR tuner to watch anything above 13 on my knob tuned Zenith. They're not maintaining the analog signal too well here, either; but, it wouldn't be cost effective for us to rent a digital cable box for each TV in the house that's on cable.

[Dave A]

I got three DTB (digital transport boxes) from Comcast when they went digital a few months ago. All three worked for a few days and went dead. Re-pinging them from their website went nowhere.

A new Samsung HD set, a used Sony XBR set and a DVD recorder with a digi tuner fixed all. All have QAM tuners and I get everything...although the channels are in the upstream Comcast mapping. No HD from the premium levels but that is expected.

I have all my basic channels but mixed up and subject to monthly re-mapping. So what if CNN is not on 31 but 103.7. I can live with that. And the OTA HD channels as must-carry are better than the version that any Comcast box would pass after massive compression.

[Jeffhs]

Several years ago, I had digital cable from Time Warner. The box ran hot, but nowhere nearly as hot as Zenith2134's. I did not have the box on top of my TV; the converter was on the lowest shelf of my entertainment unit (which now is occupied by my DVD player). The box, a Motorola STB, worked extremely well the short time I had it (a couple of years) before digital cable rates went up. I now have bare-bones basic cable running more or less directly to the set (local channels only, plus WGN America, C-SPAN 1, and a couple of religious channels, to say nothing of QVC) and no problems whatsoever with heat buildup from anything.

Every once in a while I toy with the idea of dropping cable and getting a DTV converter box, but every time I read about these boxes getting exceptionally warm (and failing within six months or so) I forget about it. I don't honestly think a DTV box with rabbit ears would work in my situation anyway, as I live in an apartment building and cannot use an outside TV antenna. Rabbit ears, unless they are the expensive amplified kind, won't work here either (and even if they did work at all, it probably would be a crap shoot as I will explain), because I'm some 45 miles from the Cleveland TV stations. It's ironic because my FM radio reception here, using an external Terk "tower" antenna atop my desk with my stereo system (and the built-in whip antennas on my FM portables, to say nothing of short wire antennas on my vintage FM radios), is excellent. I guess the difference is the all-or-nothing nature of DTV signals, and the fact that they are far weaker than FM radio stations.

BTW, why is it now impossible to hear audio from channel 6 TV stations on 87.75 MHz? (Back in my old neighborhood, long before DTV, I used to be able to hear channel eight audio at the bottom of my FM dial.) I thought the sound carriers of digital television signals were on the same frequencies as the old analog ones, unless the DTV stations are on UHF channels. I always thought that the audio carrier of, say, channel six would be 86.5 MHz (4.5 MHz above the lower edge of the channel), regardless of whether the signal was digital or analog. Why I was getting channel 8 audio on 86.5 MHz, however, is still a mystery to me, even to this day, since the sound carrier for that channel is (or was, with analog TV) 184.5 MHz. I was living in a Cleveland suburb at the time that was perhaps 30+ miles from the stations. Hmmm.

[Dave A]

Jeff,

Your 87.75 problem is the same as here in Phila. I used to like listening to the Ch 6 news on my car FM on the way home. And then digital reared it's ugly head.

My Ch 6 kept it's same assignment but my Cadillac FM radio did not make the change. It is analog and will never be able to figure out ones and zeros. Digital transmission is useless on anything analog.

The carrier may be the same, but the transport is nothing that anything analog was built for.

[ChrisW6ATV]

The audio on digital TV stations is just a stream of data packets mixed in with the rest of the data packets (video, closed captions, program guide, other audio and video sub-channels). There is nothing resembling a discrete part of the RF spectrum of a TV channel being dedicated to the audio for that station.

[ChrisW6ATV]

Zenith2134, I'm glad you got your box replaced without any real trouble, and thanks for the laugh at the latest "stupid cable-TV company tricks" story. That was a new one.

[radiotvnut]

Speaking of stupid cable company tricks, this old lady that I know had the cable company out to install her cable. She was told that her TV (an '81 Philco with rotary tuning) was too old to accept cable and that she couldn't be connected. BULLCRAP! Do they not know what a matching transformer is? She eventually gave me the set when it developed loose connections and a weak CRT. I patched it up and used it for about a year - ON CABLE!

I talked to the guy who connected our cable and he said that there are plenty of ancient TV's that people want connected - to which they refuse.

If they ever refuse to connect any TV of mine because it's "too old", I won't get a new TV. I'll just go with another signal source.

I think back to the '80's and '90's when those same old TV's were connected to cable and usually had a analog cable box sitting on top of them.

Are cable installers today that stupid or are they just trying to convince people that they need a new TV?

[leadlike]

I made the Comcast guy hook up my '49 motorola 7" and he didn't bat an eye. He said as long as I had a matching transformer, I was good to go. He went on to say that he had a Moto "golden view" set from the 40's that still worked! For once, I was impressed.

My girlfriend works for Comcast, and we had a discussion about the quality of boxes the other day (I had a relay on my box die after less than a year). According to her, box quality has really dipped down since Motorola cut production on their boxes, forcing Comcast to go with other vendors to make them. The worst quality box by far is made by a company called Scientific Atlanta. They have pallets of these things that just failed right out of the box. General Instrument also makes a decent box as well. But yes, Comcast has bad boxes-LOTS of them!

[zenithfan1]

Ugggghhh. Those Scientific Atlanta boxes ARE the worst, that's what they keep giving me. Slow hardware, poorly designed menus, poor construction ect. Mine runs at about 140 degrees Fahrenheit at the processor and power supply and it sits NEXT to a 2004 Sony KV-30HS420. The tv is not why this junk overheats, that's for sure.

[zenith2134]

I had Scientific Atlanta digital boxes for years, and they did have to be changed out frequently. The hardware, IMHO, is a major reason why people are switching to Verizon fiber around here. All I hear from neighbors and friends is how bad the cable menus and equipment is. And I certainly agree...I remember when they switched to the Samsungs, the switched outlet feature went away. Makes me wonder how long it is before the F connector is gone as well.