# Bolt and Charter



## tommiet (Oct 28, 2005)

My Bolt on Charter cable has been fine. But over the last few weeks, I'm getting some minor pixelation on HD channels. SD are fine. Charter now tells me they want to try tuner adapters. Note: This also happens on my XL4. Charter tells me that's all they can do. If that fails, the wife will have me back on Dish....

It's not bad... just reminds me of one of the reasons I left Dish.

It was my understanding that the tuning devices were not needed.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.


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## tommiet (Oct 28, 2005)

UPDATE....

Charter tech installed the Tuning adapters today. The tech does not believe this will make any difference and believes its an external issue to my home. Offered to run a new drop from the pedicel. But I'll try the new tuners and see what it does.... 

The tech did say that interference (SNR) of around 30-33db or lower will cause this issue too. Both my Tivo's are 36db. 

Will update the results.....


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

tommiet said:


> UPDATE....
> 
> Charter tech installed the Tuning adapters today. The tech does not believe this will make any difference and believes its an external issue to my home. Offered to run a new drop from the pedicel. But I'll try the new tuners and see what it does....
> 
> ...


Both of my Roamio and televisions are 36dB. No problems.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

tommiet said:


> UPDATE.... Charter tech installed the Tuning adapters today. The tech does not believe this will make any difference and believes its an external issue to my home. Offered to run a new drop from the pedicel. *But I'll try the new tuners and see what it does*.... The tech did say that interference (SNR) of around 30-33db or lower will cause this issue too. Both my Tivo's are 36db. Will update the results.....


Tuning adapters have no tuners in them. You're still using the tuners in your TiVo so a TA won't effect SNR or signal level in the least, unless you run the coax looped through it, but that is only due to some normal insertion loss. All that a TA does is take over the channel mapping duties and handles the SDV (switched digital video) functions by being the go between in the middle of the TiVo and the cable cos headend using USB. In a nutshell, The TiVo tells the TA "I want to tune to ch 738" and if it's an SDV channel, then the TA sends a signal to the headend asking what frequency ch 738 happens to be using, then once it gets an answer it tells the TiVo so it can tune into it. The cablecard comes into play to decrypt it based on what channels package you have.

This is how many MSOs are able to have more channels than their bandwidth permits. Think of SDV as "on demand" to tune regular cable channels in a sense.

The tech should know this and have explained it properly.


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## billzskillz (Aug 18, 2016)

.


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## thyname (Dec 27, 2010)

billzskillz said:


> .


Did you get to the 10 posts?

Your dots and commas are everywhere


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## tommiet (Oct 28, 2005)

HarperVision said:


> Tuning adapters have no tuners in them. You're still using the tuners in your TiVo so a TA won't effect SNR or signal level in the least, unless you run the coax looped through it, but that is only due to some normal insertion loss. All that a TA does is take over the channel mapping duties and handles the SDV (switched digital video) functions by being the go between in the middle of the TiVo and the cable cos headend using USB. In a nutshell, The TiVo tells the TA "I want to tune to ch 738" and if it's an SDV channel, then the TA sends a signal to the headend asking what frequency ch 738 happens to be using, then once it gets an answer it tells the TiVo so it can tune into it. The cablecard comes into play to decrypt it based on what channels package you have.
> 
> This is how many MSOs are able to have more channels than their bandwidth permits. Think of SDV as "on demand" to tune regular cable channels in a sense.
> 
> The tech should know this and have explained it properly.


The tech had zero idea's on what the tuners were for and had to call to find out how to install them. As I'm getting all my channels, I did not think the tuners were needed. Same tech came when I added my Tivo's and had not installed a cable card in over 2 years (I did it and I have never done one.)

3rd service call this week for the tiling issue - Charter is coming out today. NOTE: Both my Bolt and XL4 have the same issue. I replaced my BOLT with my XL4 to test.. same issue.

I may not have much choice but to go back to DISH and over pay again.....


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

tommiet said:


> The tech had zero idea's on what the tuners were for and had to call to find out how to install them. As I'm getting all my channels, I did not think the tuners were needed. Same tech came when I added my Tivo's and had not installed a cable card in over 2 years (I did it and I have never done one.)
> 
> 3rd service call this week for the tiling issue - Charter is coming out today. NOTE: Both my Bolt and XL4 have the same issue. I replaced my BOLT with my XL4 to test.. same issue.
> 
> I may not have much choice but to go back to DISH and over pay again.....


Make sure the tuning adapters are using a splitter and not using the tuning adapter passthru or you can get serious pixelation. Otherwise, it sounds like a signal issue that Charter should be able to test.


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## napa7m (Jul 8, 2016)

For what it's worth. I have the tuning adapter setup with my BOLT on Charter spectrum. 
I get pixelation every once in a while (three or four times/week). I just always assumed it was some noise or temporary degradation in the signal quality coming from Charter because similar things happened with their boxes as well. 

I am using the coax pass through on the TA. 

If it happens often, then there's probably something wrong.


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## mdavej (Aug 13, 2015)

Tuning adapters are not tuners. All they do is tell the cable company to add the channel you picked to the stream. They don't tune anything and have nothing to do with picture quality besides weakening the signal just by being connected.

So adding a tuning adapter is going to make a pixellated signal pixellate even more because of the weaker signal. Could make things a lot worse depending on how it's hooked up. You need to fix the root cause which is a poor/weak signal. This could have many causes from poor cabling and connections, to using the pass-thru on the adapter, to too many splits to poor levels coming into the house. Only reason you would need a tuning adapter on Charter is if you are missing channels. If you didn't notice any missing channels before getting the tuning adapter, then you may as well leave it disconnected.


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

napa7m said:


> For what it's worth. I have the tuning adapter setup with my BOLT on Charter spectrum.
> I get pixelation every once in a while (three or four times/week). I just always assumed it was some noise or temporary degradation in the signal quality coming from Charter because similar things happened with their boxes as well.
> 
> I am using the coax pass through on the TA.
> ...


Tuning adapters are know for having a terrible internal splitter. You could probably get rid of all your pixelation issues if you just used your own splitter instead. Charter techs are not suppose to even install a tuning adapter without using a splitter.


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## napa7m (Jul 8, 2016)

rainwater said:


> Tuning adapters are know for having a terrible internal splitter. You could probably get rid of all your pixelation issues if you just used your own splitter instead. Charter techs are not suppose to even install a tuning adapter without using a splitter.


Thanks for the suggestion. If it ever gets to a point where it seems too frequent, I'll definitely do that. But it's not a big enough concern for me right now to bother.


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