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From: terryl@tekcrl.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.video
Subject: Re: Laser and Vcr stuff
Message-ID: <337@tekcrl.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 7-Nov-85 05:06:55 EST
Article-I.D.: tekcrl.337
Posted: Thu Nov  7 05:06:55 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 8-Nov-85 22:01:17 EST
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> Not where I live.  In eastside Portland, we are served by Rogers cablesystems
> (Basically a Canadian company with franchises around the U.S.).  They
> use the Zenith Z-TAC converter box.  The video is noisy and sometimes
> not watchable.  I have an excellent picture off my outside antenna and
> prefer it to cable for watching the locals.  And the cable company tells
> me that I have a good signal level.

     I live west of Portland, served by Storer Cable, and it's not much
better. They use the Zenith Z-TAC converter box, also.
> > I understand from people who have cable (not due in my area for some
> > years yet) that it is no magic solution to these problems, either.
> > Cable signals are often poor, also.
> 
> And then Ken says:
> 
> >Cable signals also are often too poor to be worth recording.  I have an
> >A/B switch on all of my equipment because my antenna receives excellent
> >signals, but the cable is true garbage.  I am at the end of about 20 miles
> >of coax with  knows how many amplifiers and  knows
> >how many taps, each introducing noise or echoes.  
> 
> See above.  I understand the problem for me may be in the Zenith box.  
> Everything is scrambled.  When you select a channel, it determines if
> you have paid for it and then descrambles it and demodulates audio and
> video.  then they remodulate it to CH3 or CH4.  If they supplied you with
> audio and video out it would not look bad.  However, The Zenith modulator
> seems to be a piece of cheap junk.  Anybody else have this problem with
> Zenith Z-TAC???  Because our system is two way interactive, there are no
> repeaters or amps between the front end and myself - 15 miles by crow,
> who knows by cable???  Doesn't seem to matter as people within one mile
> of headend have same problem.

     Well, my Zenith box has direct video/audio out (I need it for my 25"
NEC monitor; thank God they have these outputs, or my monitor would be use-
less!!!) Sometimes, when I'm watching a premium channel (usually HBO, which
is scrambled, BTW), the picture will get real fuzzy with some snow (but not
enough to make it unwatchable, just enough to make it annoying...) and stay
like that for 5-10 minutes. Now I know Storer uses repeaters/amps `cause they
just switched over to the Zenith boxes from a different box. I wasn't getting
a good picture on some of the channels, and the person who came out to fix
it said that when they did the conversion, they left some of the amps from
the old system connected.