Possible Hunch I had about HD artifacts and bad transmission with Homerun Prime

[BonzaiDuck]

Thought I would share this, and just this disclaimer -- I could still be wrong.

Charter Cable provides my CableTV and Premiums for some four STB's in the house and my CableCard-enabled SilliconDust HD HomeRun PRime. Some few months ago, we had a thread here where people were singing the praises of the SillyDust tuners, but someone observed they occasionally had trouble with artifacts and broken transmission to the HDTV.

I may have remarked that I'd noticed the same occasional problem, and it always occurred on certain channels. (Who watches the news, and wants to live with CNN-HD with lines and artifacts appearing?)

The SillyDust connects to Charter's "Tuner-adapter" using a coax patch cable and a USB cable. I'd noticed that my problem is more serious or less, when I fiddled with the USB cable in its socket. the cable is at least six to eight feet long; was bundled up in a cable tie.

I found an outfit that sells 18" USB patch cables of the usual A/B plug combination with gold-plated contacts. It's only been about 20 minutes, but my problems seemed to disappear.

If I'm later proven wrong and somebody goes out on a limb to order such cables, they're about $2 each and the reseller adds a $9 minimum charge. I'm sure Cables-2-Go would have them. But -- they're cheap.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Thought I would share this, and just this disclaimer -- I could still be wrong.

Charter Cable provides my CableTV and Premiums for some four STB's in the house and my CableCard-enabled SilliconDust HD HomeRun PRime. Some few months ago, we had a thread here where people were singing the praises of the SillyDust tuners, but someone observed they occasionally had trouble with artifacts and broken transmission to the HDTV.

I may have remarked that I'd noticed the same occasional problem, and it always occurred on certain channels. (Who watches the news, and wants to live with CNN-HD with lines and artifacts appearing?)

The SillyDust connects to Charter's "Tuner-adapter" using a coax patch cable and a USB cable. I'd noticed that my problem is more serious or less, when I fiddled with the USB cable in its socket. the cable is at least six to eight feet long; was bundled up in a cable tie.

I found an outfit that sells 18" USB patch cables of the usual A/B plug combination with gold-plated contacts. It's only been about 20 minutes, but my problems seemed to disappear.

If I'm later proven wrong and somebody goes out on a limb to order such cables, they're about $2 each and the reseller adds a $9 minimum charge. I'm sure Cables-2-Go would have them. But -- they're cheap.

Looks like I wasn't wrong. Shorter USB cable with gold contacts got rid of artifacting.

 

[lupi]

tuning adapters in themselves are an evil creation of the devil, just allows ultrasaturation of the overburdened transmission pipes. wouldn't surprise me that they gave yo a crappy cable with one that didn't work, particularly since they're so finicky as is.

 

[lucklessgorath]

Probably a bad USB cable.

In a similar circumstance I had trouble with a new cable modem initializing. Replacing the long cables with shorter ones I had fixed it. But it put my modem far away from my desk. After some investigating I found out that the cables I have are poorly shielded RG59 coax. Today I replaced the cables with better shielded RG6.

At the same time I replaced the RG59 going to my Homerun Prime with RG6 and HDHomeRun Config reports that my signal strength has improved about 5%. But I rarely get artifacting so it will be difficult to tell if this will make a difference.

 

[Dirigible]

I've found my silicondust hdhomerun price is pretty finicky with networking equipment and will often provide a pixelated picture that I fix by swapping cables and NICs randomly until one works. Once I settle on equipment, I have no problems.