1. I strongly suggest you become familiar with the MoCA filter, it's function and where it should be installed.
2. X1 boxes appear to be FAR MORE signal sensitive than any modem or legacy cable box.
3. As I said in my earlier post, the only person that can test ALL X1 signals is a Comcast tech who is on site at your house. Comcast employees in remote locations (such as over the phone) can see only a portion of X1 signal levels which are the same levels users can see.
4. Tiling during DVR playback suggests a bad hard drive in the DVR.
mvinsc wrote:@RickGr4, Thank you for your help on this! As "early adopters" of X1 in our area the original installations were only availble by the (in this case contracted) installers, no self-install. A new amplifier specific for X1 was installed at that time (replacing a previous amplifier given to me by one of the techs I know). Not sure about a MoCA filter. Haven't ever experienced the neighbor interaction yet (I have heard of it but not experienced it at the house) so I doubt that is an issue.
I will admit, some of the coax in my house is garbage and plans are to pull in new RG6 quad to all locations we have X1 boxes and the CM. Too many projects and too little time. Cobler's kid's shoe thing. I think a bigger issue may be the ~175 foot, or so, underground RG11 cable because I live in a back house on a flag lot, but this current problem really does not appear to be a signal level issue. The boxes act erratic, need rebooting often, and the DVR recordings are what are glitching and tiling. Live view of the same channels is always okay. As I mentioned also, CM service (which also is not very tolerant of bad levels and/or ingress issues) has always remained solid and has good levels both on US and DS.
The problem I had last time the master box was swapped had nothing to do with signal level and everything to do with horrid support that wasted tens of hours of my valuable time. Turned out to be box naming (can't use the same name for a replacement box--has that been fixed?) and firmware mismatch issues between the boxes. It was a total nightmare and I was assured this would be an easy swap.
CATV and IPTV system management and Engineering, along with high end AV system design/build/programming is my day job. Given the rates Comcast charges, fixing their equipment issues should not be my second job. I don't have time to sit around the house waiting for a tech unless it is really necessary. I am trying to go through normal(ish) channels rather than calling a favor from a professional friend who supervises the tech crew. So far all the CS folks have suggested is to swap the boxes. I find it very hard to believe that the remote troubleshooters can't see what the signal levels are remotely. Common practice with cable modems and the CS people on the phone have said "they checked signal levels and they check good" on numerous occasions--but as I have mentioned I have caught them lying numerous times so you might be on to something. I assume we want to see somewhere around zero dB at the box? I have meters I can drag home and measure with but this seems like box issues, not signal level issues, to me.