09:49 AM
TV 57 channels and nothin' on...

Wow, I have cable again. See, my cable access here sucks, I have the digital box and I use Roadrunner but in the living room, alot of the digital channels, anything above 80 just won't work, either it cuts in and out continually (all the little squares redrawing the screen continually) or I get "this channel will be available shortly" on the screen only it never was. Used to be I'd call the cable company, the tech would come out and replace some splitters and cable and it would work great...until the next thunderstorm when it would go back to the same old crap of constantly redrawing or "available shortly". So after a few times of that, I gave up. I could get HBO on 66 which was the main thing I cared about, I wanted to tape Sex and the City and The Wire.

But then even that got bad so I thought I'd try it in the bedroom, the line from the pole goes to the bedroom first and the reception has always been better in there, FX comes in much clearer in the bedroom than the living room so I taped most of the Buffy reruns in there. I moved the digital box and yep, it was better, I could even see some channels I hadn't been able to access in a while (although not TVLand and the Fox Movie Channel which I really wanted!) and so it was great...for awhile. I got thru taping the end of The Wire and Sex and the City but it was iffy, even the lower channels like 66 were flipping out. So I gave up on it, left the box in the bedroom but didn't hook it up.

Last night I wanted to tape a movie on one of the digital Encore channels and I figured, what the hell, I'd give it a try and I plugged it all in and wow, look at that, not only does the channel I want work, but so do lots of others that didn't work even in the bedroom, like TVLand and FMC and all the HBO channels and Trio and BBCAmerica, cool! I decided to take another chance and I moved the digital box back out to the living room and plugged it in, not quite as many channels as in the bedroom, I really wish I could get the digital all video MTV and VH1 channels cause then I could play that when I'm working but I can get the digital Country Music channel and I can get TVLand and Trio (I want to tape Profit when they rerun it next month) but not Fox Movie Channel. I can get Encore, some channels anyway so that'll do. And a bunch of the HBOs come in pretty good too.

So I have cable again, most of it, anyway, and it's been poring rain for a week so I'm really surprised, they must have boosted the signal to this area or something because I haven't had them do anything to fix it after it got bad about a year ago.