My First Post- TV install NG

[mkgrady]

I"m new to A/V but I'm determined to become knolegable about it over time. I am a member of an electrician's forum that teaches me a lot and I'm hoping this site will be helpful too. Here goes....I connected a new 52" LCD using five component A/V cables to the cable box. I turned on the TV and all the channels are black and white with a little bit of light red here and there. Other TV's in the house work OK.My first thoughts were that I don't know the quality of the RG-6 run back to the incoming CATV service. The cable goes back to a couple of splitters and one of them has an amp but I didn't study it much.I'm assumming there was a TV in the location connected to the same RG-6 before but I'm not sure. The home owner is not around to ask.The cable box is a Scientific Atlanta 8000HD and it has no HDMI output. That's why I used the component A/V cables. I figure the box must be a few years old.I was thinking of running a temporary RG-6 back to the CATV service entrance and connect directly to the incoming CATV just to see if the cable is bad or the signal is weak because of all the splitters.I don't have any other ideas. For all I know the TV is bad but I don't know how to determine that.Anybody willing to help out a rookie?Mike

 

[Haoleb]

your component cables or outputs/inputs are likely bad.

You have black and white because your green cable is good, It carries basically, the picture. And the red and blue cables carry the colors. Check your cables. It sounds like its most likely the cables due to red sometimes working however it could also be the inputs on your tv or the cable box outputs.

It could be the CATV service, Try connecting up the tv with composite video (the yellow one) if it has it and try the picture then.

 

[mkgrady]

your component cables or outputs/inputs are likely bad.

You have black and white because your green cable is good, It carries basically, the picture. And the red and blue cables carry the colors. Check your cables. It sounds like its most likely the cables due to red sometimes working however it could also be the inputs on your tv or the cable box outputs.

It could be the CATV service, Try connecting up the tv with composite video (the yellow one) if it has it and try the picture then.

Are you saying that if I hook up a composite video and the color is good it proves the component cables (red & Blue) and not the signal form the RG-6 is bad?

I hope it's not the component cables, they are now buried in the wall with finished wall patches over the holes I had to drill through the studs. I can now see that connecting the cables and turning on the TV would have been a good idea before I patched the walls but there is so much dust created by the patch work that I avoided this step.

How common is it that new component cables are NG? I bought them at Radio Shack. I guess I could run new cables along the surface temporarily but how would I know I didn't have a second bad batch?

I also ran an HDMI cable but didn't connect it (because the cable box doesn't have an HDMI output). I figure the home owner will get a new cable box in the future and the HDMI cable can be used then. If the component cables are bad I assume the best fix is to get the new cable box now and just use the HDMI cable.

 

[Haoleb]

Yes if your color is good using composite that eliminates the cable feed not being strong enough. You dont have to get new cables to try it, Just use the ones you have run already and hook it up differently. If the audio cables are known to be good then you can use them instead of your red and blue for the video just to test if it is indeed the cables. It would seem unlikely that two out of 5 cables bought brand new wouldnt work but its one of the most common culprits. I have had particularly bad experiences with the interconnect cables from radioshack. Just about every one of them I bought has failed due to them using poor crimp connections vs solder ones. At least the cables I have used.

It still could also be the tv or the cable box too but this is an easy thing to check. You can also just try hooking a dvd player with component and see if that works. If not it eliminates the cable box and feed.

 

[Adam]

Hi, Mike, and welcome to the forum!

The following isn't meant to sound insulting. It's based off of what a friend of mine did a couple of years ago. He's a bright guy, but he wasn't familiar with A/V stuff. Make sure that you have the three component cables hooked up to the right connections on both the TV and the cable box. As an example, my friend hooked up the component video jacks on his TV to the composite video and left/right audio jacks on his satellite receiver. The result was fuzzy black and white video.

Adam

 

[mkgrady]

Hi, Mike, and welcome to the forum!

The following isn't meant to sound insulting. It's based off of what a friend of mine did a couple of years ago. He's a bright guy, but he wasn't familiar with A/V stuff. Make sure that you have the three component cables hooked up to the right connections on both the TV and the cable box. As an example, my friend hooked up the component video jacks on his TV to the composite video and left/right audio jacks on his satellite receiver. The result was fuzzy black and white video.

Adam

Thanks Adam and Haoleb, I'll try both suggestions

 

[jcPanny]

Cable test

Grady,
You can swap some of the connections to test the cables. Quality analog audio and component video cables are all made with coax. You can use the analog audio cable for 2 of the video connections, etc. Also consider using another TV or moving the TV to test the output of the cable box with a short composite video cable.

 

[mkgrady]

Grady,
You can swap some of the connections to test the cables. Quality analog audio and component video cables are all made with coax. You can use the analog audio cable for 2 of the video connections, etc. Also consider using another TV or moving the TV to test the output of the cable box with a short composite video cable.

So far I haven't tried any of the above Ideas except I connected a tiny TV to the "cable out" jack of the cable box and the picture was fine. The TV being 52" is so difficult to remove from the wall that I am thinking removing it to check or connectionsis a last resort.

So here's my plan. The cable box is relatively old and does not have an HDMI output. The owner is going to swap it for a new one that does. This has always been the plan. I have already connected the HDMI to the TV and it is waiting to be hooked up at the new cable box when it arrives (this week I think).

I suspect when I connect the HDMI cable to a know cable box it will eliminate whatever the problem is. If it doesn't I think the problem will be reduced to a bad TV. Any thoughts on this plan?

 

[Adam]

Waiting for the new cable box sounds like a good plan to me.

 

[mkgrady]

Waiting for the new cable box sounds like a good plan to me.

That did the trick. I replaced the cable box and the TV now works on HDMI and component cables. So the problem was in the cable box. Thanks to all who helped me figure this out.