Coaxial Cable 1

[johnmessina]

I am having problems with a coaxial cable television. The TV is mounted over a refridgerator. The reception of some channels is good, but the reception of some of the lower channels is very poor to nonexistant. Is the refridgerator interfereing with the reception, and if so, what steps can be taken to minimize the interference.

 

[Skogsgurra]

Unless the fridge has a VFD inside it, there should not be any problem. Look for the usual CE, UL, FCC etc marking on the fridge. At least one of them shall be there.

Refrigerators with on/off control are not continuous interferers. Only those with variable compressor speed control, i.e. with VFD built in.

 

[CarlPugh]

Unplug the refigerator and see if the problem goes away.

 

[analogkid2digitalman]

Could it be that the metal content alone of the fridge is blocking or absorbing reception?

Wheels within wheels / In a spiral array
A pattern so grand / And complex
Time after time / We lose sight of the way
Our causes can't see / Their effects.

 

[logbook]

analogkid2digitalman

I think John’s TV does not have an aerial so there is no possibility of the metal body of the refrigerator blocking or reflecting the radio waves. Metal does not tend to absorb radio waves in any case.

John,

what sort of cable TV is this? Are you on some sort of "home made" communal feed distribution system, or is it proper single subscriber cable TV? I would have thought that for cable TV you would just get the supplier to sort it out. For other sources then the most obvious things to try are turning the fridge off, as suggested earlier, and/or moving the TV elsewhere. If the cable feed is long then higher frequency signals will get attenuated more than lower frequencies. More likely however is that any communal antenna/amplifier is running slightly out of band and the gain is dropping off.

 

[felixc]

Could it be that the signal from your cable is just weak in the low channels? As logbook says, if the signal comes from a cable company, make it their problem. They MUST supply a good signal.
Is the coax in a good condition? Interference more likely appears in the low channels, when the cable connection isn't good.