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TW cable box changes channels by itself

S

Scotpfv

I was unsure if I should put this on the national tv board but decided to place it here since I'm in the DFW area. I often go to sleep at night with the TV on (Usually on MLB Network or Science Channel). I find some background stimuli helps me fall right to sleep. However, when I get up in the morning I find that the cable box is tuned to either MSNBC,KXAS,or SyFy. It seems to have changed channels during the night. (At first it was only MSNBC, over the last week it has been the other two). I'm quite sure my dog has not learned to use the remote and I doubt it is me in a sleep indused haze, so....
Is this a TW box glitch? Has anyone else had this happen? Or should I believe all the NBC/Universal world domination conspiracy theories? Any insight would be appriciated.
 
Same thing happens to my mom's TW cable box, except she's watching Game Show Network, and the box changes to KXAS.

I think it has to do with cable channels being delivered by Switched Digital Video, and the channel is timing out sometime overnight.
 
It might also be possible that some type of signal from another device is being interpreted by the box to change channels. I have found several devices in my house that can be signaled by remotes belonging to a completely different device.

Here's a test. Assuming your box has infrared (IR) signaling, place a piece of tape (not the clear type - preferably black electrical) over the IR "eye" and see if the channel change still happens. If the box is using UHF signaling then the signal could be coming from anywhere inside or outside your home. In that case, remove (unscrew) the antenna from the back of the unit.
 
Maybe it's a conspiracy by NBC Universal ;) Except that'd make more sense with Comcast cable boxes than TW ones. Seriously, Gridlock Joe is probably correct at least some of the time. I have no knowledge of which channels TW delivers via switched video, but GSN, MLB, and the Science Channel would all seem to be likely candidates. If you don't interact with the box for several hours, it may fail to re-request the channel it's tuned to, so when the signal dies it reverts back to the last non-switched channel you watched. If you can set the box to shut off after a period of inactivity, that may solve your problem since it would probably re-request the switched channel when you turned it back on.

landtuna said:
Here's a test. Assuming your box has infrared (IR) signaling, place a piece of tape (not the clear type - preferably black electrical) over the IR "eye" and see if the channel change still happens. If the box is using UHF signaling then the signal could be coming from anywhere inside or outside your home. In that case, remove (unscrew) the antenna from the back of the unit.
Click to expand...

Surprisingly, some IR can go through even black electrical tape, as I've discovered trying to solve the same problem he described (my bedroom TV remote kept randomly turning on the clock radio on my bed). I was amazed since I figured the carbon that makes the tape black would block just about anything short of X-rays.

So if you do landtuna's IR test, test your test first by trying the remote at point-blank range after applying the tape. If the remote still works, add more layers of tape until it stops. (In my case, I got lucky. A single thickness of tape right on the lens blocks the stray signals from the TV remote, but still lets enough IR through for the radio's remote to work.)
 
I seem to recall that Tivo boxes would autotune to certain channels overnight to download their electronic program guide data. I remember coming across it one night on the Discovery channel (?) On my TV it looked liked bar codes rolling by at high speed. But it said at the bottom of the screen that it was Tivo data and that normal programming would resume momentarily.
 
Thanks for all of your replies. It does confirm my thought that it was just how Time-Warner updates the EPG. I spoke to my neighbor today and mentioned this, he also said that his TW box seems to go to channel 5 (non-hi def signal) around 1 AM. Nice to know it is not just me. Although I am still wondering why it is always NBC/Universal channels my box tunes to..why not a local access ch.?
 
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