The tech guy came by our house last week on the agreed upon date, but wanted to come by early. Usually that wouldn't be a big deal but I tried to book an evening appointment to accommodate my work schedule. Whatever.
We had been getting horrible reception (skipping, stuttering, freezing picture and no audio) on about half our channels during most of the day, especially during the morning and evening. CTV, Comedy, and seemingly all the Bell-related channels were affected. Global/Shaw channels always worked without incident. Hmm...
Anyways, he decided that the problem was with the Honeywell box we had in our basement. That's the device that split cable and internet throughout out the house. Similar devices are found in pretty much every new home to make wiring easier. He said they weren't of the best quality and was interfering with some of the channels. He put in a Shaw-approved box and bypassed the Honeywell unit completely. We have not had a problem since.
I asked the tech why the problem would only be appearing now when we've had the same hardware configuration for a couple years now. He said with the digital conversion, Shaw's been moving their channels around. It was his theory that the ones were were having problems with were ones that had recently been moved. For some reason, the Honeywell box was causing interference on those channels.
This, I think, doesn't seem like a plausible explanation. It doesn't make sense to me why only non-Shaw/Global channels would be affected and why it would be a problem during certain times of the day and not during other times. Whatever tinkering the tech did worked, though, so I can't complain too much.
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