We just bought a 50" plasma tv from panasonic. We have Coxcable, and have a split signal going to 5 different rooms int he house from the street. and 3 differnt types of cable boxes in the house. TV DVR in the LR (the plasma), HDTV in Bedroom, a standard box, and 2 non boxed cable tvs. When we had the HDTV installed he put some sort of new splitter or booster on the thing outside. We all ready had a booster hooked up from the wall, to the tv in the living room ( pre plasma tv).
We hook up the plasma TV today and the picture is HORRIBLE, everything looks blockym pixelated and delayed. just like if you took a 3x5 picture and made it a 100 by 100 picture. ( the TV we replaced was a 36" CRT standard tv 9 years old and had a fine quality to it).
Now my Mother in Father are imidiately discouraged at the picture quality. I show them though through the Bose DVD player we bought that DVD's look ok. still a little pixelated on normal movies, and the movies filmed in high res, or on digital film look really good. ( all this being said i have HDTV hooked up my bedroom on a 50" rear projectiong that only supports 480i HD on our current cable set up and it looks phenominal. regular cable through the box looks a pixelated but not as bad as it does on the plasma)
We removed the booster from the line to the Plasma tv before we hooked it up. I heard that if you have a double boosted line that it could hurt the tv and DVR box.
So before i call Cox cable, What do i need to ask for, ask about or possibley do myself to help this situation. My father is all most ready to take this $3k tv back to the store. PLease help!
I will be checking back frequently to help myself out if you need any information on the set up!
I am guessing that your DVR is a Motorola DCT 64xx
Does this happen mainly on channels 99 and under?
If so you might try hooking the cable line right to the tv and see if you get a better picture with the tv''s built in tuner, you see the 64xx receive analog signals on 99 and under and unlike your tv it doesnt have a comb filter to clear up the picture.
if this is the case you might see if Cox will swap out your 64xx with a 34xx which has all digital tuners and receives much cleaner digital simulcasts of the analog channels. (note that the all digital service is not available in all areas yet)
Another thing that comes to my attention is that you said you have 5 outlets in your home. I am going to assume that you have cable internet too so there's another one making 6 total. I do some work with Comcast and we usually recommend an amplifier on any setup with more than 4 outlets especially when there are cable modems or STB's (set top boxes) as these devices require a cleaner signal to work properly.
Also if you have an amplifier you need to have it in the line BEFORE the signal is split so it will boost the distributed signal, if you have it the line after the splitters all you are doing is amplifying a dirty signal.
Another thing (and this is a lot more important than it sounds) make sure that the splitters and amplifiers you use are good quality, I have seen many trouble calls over wal-mart or radio shack splitters, as they are lower quality and lose signal strength. Even if your picture looks good on a small tv connected to analog cable that dont mean the signal is stable enough for a larger tv or a digital device.
I sure hope I offered some advice that helps, if not I would recommend having cox come out and do a signal quality test on your lines before considering taking that beautiful 50" plazma back to the store
ok, i called Cox cable. They did the test over the phone and boosted the signal to the house. Our picture improved a little bit but is still prett dirty compared to what i have seen else where. Even the HD signal comes in a little tiled/pixelated.
Cox should be out here on monday/tuesday to take a look at what is going on.