Poor analogue cable reception

I'm not sure if this is the forum for such discussions. If it is not I apologise.

Our household subscribes to the NTL analogue cable TV service in Dublin.

Lately, the picture quality we have been recieving has been poor.

Some channels have grey 'speckles' in the picture, others are 'ghosted' by other channels and some are unwiewable altogether.

I have tried the fine-tuning facility on my tv but to no avail. Is there anything posters can suggest we do to improve the picture quality?

Many thanks.

You could try purchasing a signal booster if you do not already have one, this may improve the signal are are not massivly expensive.

Other than that not sure really

Analogue cable still exists? I thought it has been phased out by now.

Same here, but some parts of the country still cannot get Digital Cable, Milton Kenyes and I think some parts of London and the South of England cannot recieve it.

We went Digital about 7 years ago, my aunt still had it until recently and then changed and upgraded to V+HD in one go, oddly enough Virgin let them keep the Analogue box, which is no use to them at all now.

I have digital cable now (Virgin Media) however the channels on my tv on analogue are quite poor reception now.

Yep, MK still has analogue cable and doubt this will never change. BT own the line, Virgin own the service. Neither see it as their property to change to digital.

It's great though as for the last month they have been showing Sky Sports 3 unencrypted for those who have tv's that can tune below the usual 21-69 spectrum. It's a shame SS3 has so much **** on it.

It's not uncommon for many people to get certain cable channels for free as a result of leaky cabling and such. Here I get Sky Sports 3 and Hallmark (previously Sky One) just from my aerial (reception is patchy however).

How does analogue cable work? Does it transmit on frequencies outside of the usual spectrum which the box then converts - and hence non-cabled televisions can pick the services up if they can tune to those frequencies?

Or can you plug it straight into your TV and use it as you would any bog standard analogue telly? I know that in the US you can just tune the telly like you would with analogue terrestial.

Here In Dublin it works like that .

They pick up the BBC,UTV,and CH4 from Divis in NI and rebroadcast them on VHF Band III frequencies for the most part.




It still exists here in Dublin because some parts of the system are 30 to 40 years old and have needed massive investment to bring up to a standard suitable for digital cable which NTL (now UPC) hadn't the cash to fund properly

If you tune it in straight through the TV, then how do they limit who can access it?

And re the spillover, how does that work - I take it only when you've got cable running to your house..?

Not wanting to be facetious here, but if you've a problem with the picture on a cable service you're paying for, surely you should contact your cable provider.

Yep, that's pretty well how it works in the UK as well. The VHF signal is sent down the cable from the headend to the hubsites etc to the homes. The converter changes it to UHF. The UHF frequencies, however, are not the same as terrestrial.