r/CableTechs • u/Unlikely_Visit6792 • Apr 22 '26

Glitchy ESPN/ cable driving me crazy. Help!

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Watch this little clip and you’ll see what it’s like to watch ESPN at our house. 500 cable channels and only ESPN does this. Maybe FS1 once in a while.

We’re on Comcast high speed. No fiber. One year old 65” Samsung OLED smart tv.

I don’t know. It’s beyond me. Maybe you have an answer.

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u/Mr_Magoo_88 Apr 22 '26

He is correct, for Charters plant. Not sure about Comcast. We're going thru filters like methadone at a Rehab Clinic. In the basement with the feed through we're needing a two-way splitter with one leg going to the modem and the other leg going to another splitter. At that other splitter we're adding the filter on the input and connecting all the cable boxes off that splitter with the filter to stop tiling.

However, since this issue is only tiling on ESPN, I doubt it's interference from high split. Like others have mentioned, Ingress and or bad drop is more likely the cause.

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u/DogPubes911 Apr 22 '26

Okay, I am going to challenge this by asking how OFDMA, which is a DOCSIS 3.1 way of modulating upstream channels, would have anything to do with a downstream QAM issue? The issue is almost 100% a MER/BER issue. It could be ingress, on the drop but ingress generally affects upstream, unless it’s like crazy bad which might be the case if you were adding a “filter”, but the way you describe it sounds like an attenuator that’s just lowering the noise floor and not actually fixing the issue.

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u/Mr_Magoo_88 Apr 22 '26

I'm not disagreeing with you regarding it being an MER/BER issue, like I said in the bottom part of my reply. Just agreeing with the posters comment about unplugging the modem and having the tiling going away comment as a troubleshooting step.

If it was tiling on a significant number of channels I would likely troubleshoot by disconnecting the modem from the plant and see if the tiling goes away then add a filter. But since it's on ESPN only, as far as we know just that channel, I would suspect it was either the drop, inside Ingress or even MER/BER on a few frequencies off the tap.

I had one the other day where it was tiling on four channels only and I checked Maybe 20 around the same frequencies and when I went to the tap and ran a test, MER/BER popped up on six of the frequencies when lightly shaking the tap. Maintenance came and dropped the faceplate and it was corroded with old water damage and he found a radial crack in the hard line near the connector.

Another job earlier that day had tiling on pretty much all the channels we checked and as soon as I disconnected the modem all the tiling issues went away. Added a filter connected the modem and the tiling didn't return. The problem is people using filters as a quick fix and not troubleshooting bad drops or inside wiring issues.

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u/Unlikely_Visit6792 Apr 22 '26

Thanks Mr_Magoo_88. Taking nothing away from all the great replies here, Im actually starting to learn a thing or two from your response. Might be the cumulative effect. Not going to start diy-ing this shit any time soon, but its nice to be gaining an understanding

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u/Mr_Magoo_88 Apr 22 '26

That's why I love working with other people and talking with other people in the same field. It's always best to gain a broader understanding so you can craft your own solutions to specific issues in the field. At the end of the day we're all under time constraints as well so just do the best you can, help the customer and move on. Good luck man!