Cable Installation: Attempt #1
I left work early yesterday to be home when Comcast came to install the cable and Internet. (Yes, I have been living without cable and high-speed Internet for over a year. But, in my defense, I have been pretty busy.) My roommate, Perry, and I had spent much of the weekend preparing for their arrival: ripping out all the existing cable, moving furniture, measuring, and drilling through floors and ceilings.
We live directly under Sutro Tower, so we get a lot of signal interference on everything from television and radio signals to keyless vehicle entry to garage door openers to mobile phones. For this reason, we were very diligent about asking some important questions before scheduling the installation.
So, when the contract installer (who was very hot) got to the house without quad-shielded RG-6 coaxial cable, we were quite annoyed. He said that he had tri-shielded cable and that they never use quad-shielded cable. The Comcast representative to whom we had spoken when setting up the installation had assured us that they use nine-times-shielded cable from the street to the house and quad-shielded cable within the houses in this area. (We also checked the street cable to our house, which turned out not to even be quad-shielded.)
Incidentally, we also asked the original Comcast representative if the technicians could recode the DVR remote control frequencies so that we could have two DVRs in the same room without their remote controls affecting each other. She claimed that they could. But, the installer claimed otherwise.
We refused the installation.
The installer's recommendation to us was to buy our own quad-shielded cable and have the installer use it rather than the Comcast-supplied cable. He said that perhaps Comcast would credit the account for some of the cost of the better cable.
We called Comcast to see what was up. The supervisor at Comcast claimed that they do, indeed, use quad-shielded cable in this area (but could not confirm if the technicians could recode the DVR remotes). He said that the contractor should have had the better cable if he was installing in our area.
Comcast is going to send out one of their own company installers with an installation supervisor on Wednesday. We'll see how that goes. Either way, we're now getting free installation.
We live directly under Sutro Tower, so we get a lot of signal interference on everything from television and radio signals to keyless vehicle entry to garage door openers to mobile phones. For this reason, we were very diligent about asking some important questions before scheduling the installation.
So, when the contract installer (who was very hot) got to the house without quad-shielded RG-6 coaxial cable, we were quite annoyed. He said that he had tri-shielded cable and that they never use quad-shielded cable. The Comcast representative to whom we had spoken when setting up the installation had assured us that they use nine-times-shielded cable from the street to the house and quad-shielded cable within the houses in this area. (We also checked the street cable to our house, which turned out not to even be quad-shielded.)
Incidentally, we also asked the original Comcast representative if the technicians could recode the DVR remote control frequencies so that we could have two DVRs in the same room without their remote controls affecting each other. She claimed that they could. But, the installer claimed otherwise.
We refused the installation.
The installer's recommendation to us was to buy our own quad-shielded cable and have the installer use it rather than the Comcast-supplied cable. He said that perhaps Comcast would credit the account for some of the cost of the better cable.
We called Comcast to see what was up. The supervisor at Comcast claimed that they do, indeed, use quad-shielded cable in this area (but could not confirm if the technicians could recode the DVR remotes). He said that the contractor should have had the better cable if he was installing in our area.
Comcast is going to send out one of their own company installers with an installation supervisor on Wednesday. We'll see how that goes. Either way, we're now getting free installation.