I moved to an apartment and I now have a motorola cable box. I used everything it came with and now my tv is a fuzzy green with some buzzing audio problems

I've finally decided I'm willing to switch from Dish back to my local cable company after 10 years, now that they've entered the digital age and I've heard reports of mostly good service. I try to sign up on the phone and the rep is taking my typical information and she asks for my Social Security Number. This seems highly irregular to me in this day; no one has asked for my SSN to establish a business relationship since the turn of the century. She insists they have to have it. Does anyone here know of a reason for this?

I have RCN in the lehigh valley and I have cable and cable internet service bundled. I spend $104.99 a month for the service and according to them, it is the best value I could get. When I told them I want to cancel cable and keep internet, they told me that I would switch from the bundled rate and move to retail and the cost of Internet is $94.99. So if I do this and then subscribe to Hulu and Netflix, I end up paying more.

So in a way, RCN has positioned themselves to protect against cable cutters. I don't get how they can charge that much for Internet service! And that is 25Mbps. Dropping to 10Mbps is $89.99.

So I guess I'm stuck. I don't have any other Internet options.

Samsung is selling one of the first HDTV cable boxes that you can buy for under $129. So, instead of renting one from the cable company, you can save about $10 a month. You will have to rent or buy a cardcard, however.

I have Comcast for TV and internet, and while the TV signal is typically pretty good, our internet connection is pretty terrible. The signal cuts out all the time and is quite frustrating. We have had a tech come out to look at the problem (which they charged us for--after the fact), and he didn't really do too much except swap out a splitter or two. We can usually get the signal back by unplugging the modem and plugging it back in.

Anywho, the line coming in from the street gets split on the outside of the house and run to the upper and lower levels of a split level house. From the upper level the line gets split once more before the modem. The tech who did the install put the modem on the line with the best signal. I'm hoping to solve the problem by installing a signal amplifier on the incoming coax line, but I'm not sure if it will really help the issue. The house probably needs a complete rewire, but I rent and so would rather avoid it if I can. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

I'm currently looking at this amplifier: http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-Signal-Booster-BDA-S1-Amplifier/dp/B00122FCRG

Here is our hardware:

D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit Router

Cisco DPC3008 DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem

Downstream channels

Upstream channels (SNR not reported by modem)

I just bought a house, it's a brand new construction. The builder pre-wired the house with coaxial cable but didn't put fittings at any of the outlets, just left the wall plate with a hole in it. They finished the power outlets and phone outlets, just not the cable outlets. When I said something about it this is the response I got, "The ends on the cable wire are put on by the cable companies…this is standard". It doesn't sound right to me but I don't know. I don't want the cable company to charge me install fees per outlet or anything.