"Thick foggy distortion lines" scrolling up the TV?

[Coldkilla]

We just plugged in our new LCD TV. We have a Blu-Ray, an Xbox360, and a DirectTV DVR.

The Blu-Ray and Xbox360 display a crystal clear picture. While the DirectTV DVR shows these "lines" (for lack of a better world) that scroll up the screen. The "lines" are thick and transparent. They are more like a slight fog than a line, the "lines/fog" travel vertically up the screen at a very low rate of speed (maybe 1 pass from bottom to top every 15 seconds). The signal is better now, but initially it was much more apparent... the following may be irrelvent now but I think its worth mentioning:

========================================
========================================
Initially it was much worse, but it was far from a direct and clear connection. We are waiting for our new HD DirectTV box (in two weeks), and wanted to temporarily connect the new TV to the current DirectTV DVR box. The new TV is in a different location than the old TV, the cables for the DirectTV DVR box were too short to reach the new TV location and we had to jump through some hoops in order to try and get it to work. We had to create a sort of "daisy chain" if you will. The daisy chain was as follows:

Cable Wires(2) from Satellite >> DirectTV DVR Receiver >> First RCA Cable from DirectTV DVR Receiver (Video Out) to old CRT TV (RCA Input) >>> Next RCA cable from old TV (RCA out) to the new TV video imput (AV IN 1).

The "fog" was very apparent, and the actual images on the screen were morphing slightly as the thick transparent line went through it.
========================================
========================================

Now our current situation:
We spent about an hour organizing the cabling in our basement to give us much more slack. The TV is now connected directly to the DirectTV DVR Receiver (the way it should be). The problem is still there, but its about 80% less noticeable. But the problem is still there! I assumed the problem was because of the connections earlier but now its directly connected to the DirectTV DVR Receiver.... The Xbox360, and Blu-Ray on their inputs have absolutely no problems what so ever.... but we are still scratching our heads when it comes to the DirectTV and the new TV and these thick foggy lines crossing vertically across our screen... We are using Monster Cables if that accounts for anything. Any 'input' appreciated!

 

[s44]

Ground loop. Should clear up when you switch to HDMI.

 

[krotchy]

Originally posted by: s44
Ground loop. Should clear up when you switch to HDMI.

What he said.

The foggy line you are seeing is the 60HZ AC line "beating" with the 59.996Hz refresh rate on a TV. It is a common occurrence if your house has older wiring. There are various methods to fixing this depending on what is causing it, but typically just getting a good quality surge protector that can provide some isolation is a good start.

Oh and monster cables are overpriced but they are not going to help/hurt anything in this situation. Get nice cheap cables at monoprice.com please stop feeding the BS monster brand, thanks

 

[Modelworks]

The problem is that your sat box is connected to coax from the dish that runs through a grounding block outside the home.
You can check that the grounding block is grounded, some installers install one but fail to connect the actual ground wire to the homes meter. If the ground is connected anywhere else it will create a ground loop. Get yourself a cheap volt meter, set it to AC then place one probe on the case of the sat box and the other on the ground of the lcd tv coax connector or exposed metal. If the reading is high , like 100 volts then you need to find out what the cause is as that can cause damage over time to equipment that shares connections.

 

[Coldkilla]

Alright so its a refresh rate problem. When we do get our HD box from DirectTV, I'll try the HDMI cable and hope that fixes the issue. Now in terms of grounding and wiring, the other appliances on the same curcuit in the house as the TV don't even need to be plugged in to have it happen. So could the TV be using more power than the house wiring itself can handle? I'll see what I can do about this volt meter, but there's 2 Coax cables attached to the cable box, do I test with a probe on each one and should there be a difference?

Also, once the DirectTV guys finally get here, what is something I should make sure to mention?

 

[Modelworks]

You just need to test from the sat box, where the outside of a coax cable connects, bare metal of the box. It doesn't matter which cable as they both share the same ground.
You can also measure from the ground hole (bottom round part) of a wall outlet to the case of the box, there shouldn't be much difference in voltage if the wiring in the home and the sat box is wired right.


example in my apartment the voltage difference between the coax cable and the ground at the wall is just .45V

 

[Coldkilla]

Forgive me if I screw this up but just so I'm clear:

Get this cheap "volt meter", connect it to the Coax cable (cable from the satellite I'm assuming) meets the DirectTV DVR box, and check to see if the voltage is high.

When the DirectTV guys come, what do I tell them exactly? Is the "ground wire connected to the 'homes meter?'" Model was talking about the 'ground hole of the wall outlet', are you talking about where the Coax meets a hub of the other similar cables in our basement?

-----Edit: DirectTV said they could reschedule sooner, even as early as tomorrow. I scheduled the appointment so hopefully the HDMI cables will do the trick otherwise it'll probably mean we'll have to rewire the entire house...

 

[Coldkilla]

They're here now... the two DirectTV guys have never heard of this.. :/

Edit: Well they finished, its connected with an HDMI cable and it works 100%. They left the old satellite in the middle of the sidewalk infront of our house, they left all the wood shavings caused by drilling a hole into the basement for the cables. They acknowledged we would need two additional coax cables to connect a new DVR when we get one but refused to go back to their car and drill the hole a little wider so that we wouldn't have to worry about it when we finally got the DVR (the two coax cables for the DVR would have to go through the hole)... They actually had to drill two holes in our floor because the first time they fucked up and hit concrete underneath...

That said, the TV looks great and everything works...