coaxial cable to living room via attic

BANNERMAN98

for the christmas ive run a cable from my sky box through the attic and down into the living room so i can watch it there. quite a long cable needed. thing is after a few minutes i get bad interference, i get up, move the cable a bit and its gone. minutes later its back. now there is another tv cable and antenna up there so is the interference coming from them? i initially planned to run it downstairs along the wall. would that eliminate the static interference problems or is it just like top gear" ambitious but rubbish?

Avns1s

Where do you "move the cable"?

Sounds to me like a bad connection at one end or other.

BANNERMAN98

sorry what im trying to say there was i just move the cable around a bit and the signal clears up, my friend helped me with it and he said its not the best quality cable i could have got from the electrical shop but its what they gave me

Avns1s

But where? At the back of the TV? At the back of the skybox? In your attic?

Still sounds like you need to remake the coax connections properly.

BANNERMAN98

well its coming down from the attic and into the back of the tv but if i move the cable up into the attic or pull it down a bit more that clears the problem up temporarily

Peter Rhea

The proper way to wire up those Belling-Lee aerial plugs is here, though most people don't bother with the solder (& then wonder why the power supply to 'magic eyes' is unreliable).

BANNERMAN98

i dont have one of those magic eye things, but could the other tv wires and antenna in the attic be a factor at all?

Peter Rhea

The other stuff in the attic shouldn't be causing the problem you describe. You either have a poorly made connection or you've damaged the cable.

BANNERMAN98

my friend did say that the cable they sold was a low quality one

Peter Rhea

Are there any markings (brand name, numbers & letters) on the cable? Maybe post them here, or post a photo. Post one of the connection(s) too.

Curing the fault by moving the cable around would suggest a poorly made connection, or a connector that isn't intended for that particular cable & isn't a good fit.

BANNERMAN98

i probably should have mentioned before now the cable is 30m in length, also there are no markings on the cable, just a plain black cable. my cousin who does this for a living has said the connections are good but he did say a few times the cable itself isnt the best one. does anyone know a good quality cable i can get?

winston_1

If your cousin does it of a living, can't he supply good cable for you?

BANNERMAN98

he can but he is somewhat of an eclipse at times!!

winston_1

As I understand it you are running a 30m cable from RF out on a Sky box to another room via the loft and tuning the TV on analogue to the Sky box output.

A poor quality cable should not cause this, after all poor cable has been used for analogue TV for many years. Almost certainly the connections. Have you made them exactly as in post 6, in particular is the braid over the claws? Many people bunch it up under the claws which causes a poor connection and this type of problem.

Have you tried changing the RF output channel of the Sky box and retuning the TV? Channel 21 will have half the loss over this cable length of channel 68.

BANNERMAN98

is it ok if some wiring is showing at the back of the connector?

BANNERMAN98

well thats the last throw of the dice, ive followed the instructions outlined above from post 6, i put the connector into the old tv(connector in that is not the best) anyway it was still snowing and poor so i slightly bended the pin thing and put it back into the tv and a clear picture, just hope it holds this time