Do cable boxes receive better signal than QAM tuners?
DaDude asked:
I have my cable split three ways in my house. Two of them are hooked up to a digital cable box and one is hooked up to my TV via the QAM tuner. When watching the digital cable boxes, everything is fine. But when watching the cable via the QAM tuner, there is frequent picture breakup and when I check the menu, the signal is low. But this is strange because my other two cable boxes seem to receive the signal just fine.
I have my cable split three ways in my house. Two of them are hooked up to a digital cable box and one is hooked up to my TV via the QAM tuner. When watching the digital cable boxes, everything is fine. But when watching the cable via the QAM tuner, there is frequent picture breakup and when I check the menu, the signal is low. But this is strange because my other two cable boxes seem to receive the signal just fine.
So, do cable boxes do a better job at receiving signal than QAM tuners?
The channels recognized by digital cable box are in most cases encrypted while the QAM tuner in a TV can only display unencrypted QAM, or “clear QAM” channels. This means you cannot compare the two.
In your case, it may be that your cable provider is allocating less bandwidth for clear QAM channels than encrypted QAM for your cable box.
It may also just be your splitter. Many splitters do not split the signal evenly. Try running your cable directly to the TV without the splitter(s) to see if the signal strength improves. If it does, get a new splitter. If it doesn’t, you’re likely out of luck with the TV QAM tuner.
One last thing, it may just be a poor tuner in your TV. The QAM tuner in TV’s is usually just an extra “freebie” feature thrown in with little effort.