Hacked Airwaves?

Has anyone else's cable been getting hacked intermittently with black, along with some strange, occasional static bursts with a voice in the background yelling, then, occasionally, they cut to a different person talking about something, then your show comes back on? We've been having this happen all night across all channels. When it pops back on, the show name bar thingy shows up on the bottom of the screen as though you had just turned to it. Also, at the same time, my internet service has been down all the way up until now. I have Comcast for both my digital cable and cable internet connection. I live in the north Chicago suburbs, as well. Very odd.

sounds like either a bad connection (most likely) that is crossing signals with nearby electrnic equipment or antenna, or you've got a phreaker secretly "borrowing" your line on and off..

If the cable is at fault then its most likely just water in the copper between you and the pole. That or the DAC (digital->analog converter.. in this case the optical->copper doohickey on the pole) is busted (your neighbors would notice too tho).

Phreaker? haha... unfortunately I dont think phreaking really exists anymore... can't even tone most payphones without getting shot straight to a human operator. Plus the true definition of "phreaker" is confined to playing with telephones, cellular and landline. Ever since ESS5+ became the norm there hasnt been much room to wiggle on landlines, and cellular is just boring these days.

Also, make sure your tv is set for CATV and not UHF/VHF or somethin... if its not on CATV itll still try to pull signals out of the air and will screw up your cable signal. If you have a cable box, try not using it and see if that cleans it up. If it does, there you go. Same goes for VCR's or anything else... if theyre between the tv and the wall, take them out of the loop and see what happens.

Originally posted by junglejake
Has anyone else's cable been getting hacked intermittently with black, along with some strange, occasional static bursts with a voice in the background yelling, then, occasionally, they cut to a different person talking about something, then your show comes back on? We've been having this happen all night across all channels. When it pops back on, the show name bar thingy shows up on the bottom of the screen as though you had just turned to it. Also, at the same time, my internet service has been down all the way up until now. I have Comcast for both my digital cable and cable internet connection. I live in the north Chicago suburbs, as well. Very odd.

Wow, I've been getting those same problems over here in London Ontario. My cable internet is crapping out on me and while my T.V doesn't produce a black screen, it does get periodic bursts of static in which voices are heard. My cable company is going to launch Voice-over-IP on there lines so I'm certain they are just testing things out. Could be happening to you, who knows.

It might be realated to this:

news.com.com...

Then again it might not.

Come to think about it a coworker was talking about his cablemodem bouncing on him. I think he said he has Comcast but not sure, most cable networks here are Time Warner.
Oh joy more providers starting to offer VoIP!!
Cacacananan you-u-u He-rere M-mee-e

Yep. Comcast has been bugger-all useless for the last week after about 6pm. Our cable TV has displayed the exact same problems, black bars, voiceovers, occasionally pixelating digital video like a smudged DVD, and our internet service has been out for three nights in the last week.

Shoulda gone dish... oh well...