How do I check cable TV signal strength?

Sandy & Shirley wrote:
Bought a new RV and when we camp with friends, their cable TV reception is always better than ours. They will get 20 or 40 channels clear while we get 4 or 5 and most of the others with snow.

Does anyone know how to test the signal strength of the cable TV signal?

We want to test it at the campground post and the back of the TV along with the various switches that allow us to switch from Cable to Satellite to Antenna.

Want to find out were the signal strength drops. Naturally our dealer does not have a cable drop and no want to test what is going wrong!

Some TVs have a built in signal strength meter, sometimes is in the TVs setup menu.

BUT, you do need to understand with modern day TV from digital OTA (over the air) and cable you will need to rescan your TV tuner whenever you move to a different campground.

OTA and cable use what is known a "virtual" channel numbering.. Channels are no longer broadcast via the actual channel frequency and what you may find is Ch2 is now found on say Ch57 but is still called Ch2.. This assignment is no longer valid once you leave a particular broadcast area or cable system..

Hence the rescan thing..

Additionally, cable systems are dropping the analog rebroadcasts in favor of all digital (AKA "QAM") transmissions. In order for your TV to pick up QAM, it MUST have a QAM capable tuner (if your TV has NTSC (Analog) AND ATSC (OTA digital) tuner you have a chance that it does have QAM for the cable digital).

If you have an analog only TV then the tuner is only capable of getting the analog channels that the cable co is offering which could be why others in the same campground get more channels than you.

If the cable co is all digital (QAM) you need to make sure you are using a good quality RG6 coax cable keeping it as short as possible. RG59 has a higher loss and can affect how much usable signal the TV gets.

ATSC and its cable cousin QAM are severely affected by noise, high loss coax reduces usable signal and any local noise can easily swamp the signal. Result is no channels found.

Other items inside or near your RV can also swamp the QAM cable signal.. Items like cheaply made LED lights with a voltage regulator or even your built in converter..

Try turning off the converter and any LED lights you have and try a tuner rescan.

On edit..

Make SURE your TV tuner is set to CATV and not "air" or "antenna".. Makes a difference, cable TV shares some of the OTA frequencies but also uses additional frequencies not available to OTA.. So if TV is set to antenna or air it is only scanning some of the possible cable channels.

As a troubleshooting procedure you can disconnect the TV tuner coax from the RVs coax. Then using a known good coax of enough length you connect the TV directly to the campground cable post.

Then rescan and see if you get more channels.

If you get more channels then the fault lies within the RVs wiring and or signal processor (box of buttons if equipped) or the Antenna/cable switch..

If the channels stay the same then fault could be campground post, try a different post (they often do have issues with campground hookups so don't be afraid to bring this up to the campground if you don't have cable on your post).