Just completed an attic crawl.
I have a theory, and yes it IS a conspiracy theory.
I've noticed in more than one place where during the 80's, 90's and even early 00's the cable TV picture was clear as a bell. Then digital cable came out, and slowly but surely the regular cable quality decreases over time and becomes fuzzy. Official cable company answer "It's the cabling in your house, all the newer houses have digital cable and it's clear. Our regular cable is clear to, must be your wiring." Pay for service calls, it may clear up for a little while, but all the while they will try to sell you digital cable. I don't think it's an accident.
The cable back to my room here at my grandparents house was fuzzy, bad. When I got cable Internet, I replaced the lone RG59 cable from the old splitter, and put in dual RG6 from a high quality splitter meant for combined digital satellite and cable. It helped but it was still fuzzy. There was one lone stretch of RG59 between the outside cable inlet an the primary splitter. I just got done replacing it.
Now my room has RG6 from the primary high dollar splitter, and the rest of the house has signal from a cascade to another splitter my grandfather insist is high quality because it came from the cable company 10-15 years ago and had never been used. I don't know the frequency range of that one, but it did seem to be a solid good quality device, I doubt it's good enough for today's digital pickyness. The TV in the living room is showing some improvement. That one bothers me. That room was an addition to the house completed three or four years ago. The contractor used the old style cable on it, probably because it was cheaper, and other clues in the room indicate he didn't do the best of jobs on everything. My room looks tremendously better, but is still staticy. The cable company replaced all the cable in the neighborhood about 9 months ago, it has RG6 or better (said AWG 8 on the insulation) right up to the house that I tied into. My room should be near perfect in clarity. It is not. I seem to have a bit less lag in web browsing, the picture is clearer, but still quite a bit of static. I call shenanigans. I really think there's a conspiracy to get people to switch to digital cable by lowering the quality of the regular cable.
I talked to grandpa about this and he told me about the Corpus Christie area. Back in the late 70's when cable first started to come out and everyone still had antennas the picture was great. Then the cable company came in, started selling cable, put up a tower and the TV reception went to shit. The locals complained, the cable company denied interfering with the regular broadcast, and nobody could really prove otherwise. So the cable company slowly got more subscribers, and antenna reception continued to suck. Then a hurricane hit and tore the tower out of the ground. Suddenly antenna reception was good again. The public made a big deal about it, they were ignored, a new tower went in so the cable company could start their business again. When the tower went in, it began to suck again. I honestly think there is a conspiracy in the name of service selling.
this is now crossposted on Chrisism
I've noticed in more than one place where during the 80's, 90's and even early 00's the cable TV picture was clear as a bell. Then digital cable came out, and slowly but surely the regular cable quality decreases over time and becomes fuzzy. Official cable company answer "It's the cabling in your house, all the newer houses have digital cable and it's clear. Our regular cable is clear to, must be your wiring." Pay for service calls, it may clear up for a little while, but all the while they will try to sell you digital cable. I don't think it's an accident.
The cable back to my room here at my grandparents house was fuzzy, bad. When I got cable Internet, I replaced the lone RG59 cable from the old splitter, and put in dual RG6 from a high quality splitter meant for combined digital satellite and cable. It helped but it was still fuzzy. There was one lone stretch of RG59 between the outside cable inlet an the primary splitter. I just got done replacing it.
Now my room has RG6 from the primary high dollar splitter, and the rest of the house has signal from a cascade to another splitter my grandfather insist is high quality because it came from the cable company 10-15 years ago and had never been used. I don't know the frequency range of that one, but it did seem to be a solid good quality device, I doubt it's good enough for today's digital pickyness. The TV in the living room is showing some improvement. That one bothers me. That room was an addition to the house completed three or four years ago. The contractor used the old style cable on it, probably because it was cheaper, and other clues in the room indicate he didn't do the best of jobs on everything. My room looks tremendously better, but is still staticy. The cable company replaced all the cable in the neighborhood about 9 months ago, it has RG6 or better (said AWG 8 on the insulation) right up to the house that I tied into. My room should be near perfect in clarity. It is not. I seem to have a bit less lag in web browsing, the picture is clearer, but still quite a bit of static. I call shenanigans. I really think there's a conspiracy to get people to switch to digital cable by lowering the quality of the regular cable.
I talked to grandpa about this and he told me about the Corpus Christie area. Back in the late 70's when cable first started to come out and everyone still had antennas the picture was great. Then the cable company came in, started selling cable, put up a tower and the TV reception went to shit. The locals complained, the cable company denied interfering with the regular broadcast, and nobody could really prove otherwise. So the cable company slowly got more subscribers, and antenna reception continued to suck. Then a hurricane hit and tore the tower out of the ground. Suddenly antenna reception was good again. The public made a big deal about it, they were ignored, a new tower went in so the cable company could start their business again. When the tower went in, it began to suck again. I honestly think there is a conspiracy in the name of service selling.
this is now crossposted on Chrisism