I have a LG Plasma TV - about 3 years old. It has 2 HDMI ports.

TWC cable is hooked to the TV HDMI port with HDMI cable. About a year ago - storm came through and fried cable box. The HDMI port on the TV that the cable box was hooked to also stopped working.
I asked the cable tech if there was anything I could do such as surge protector on cable line. He said that a surge protector would degrade the picture and I should not get one.

Fast forward 1 year - I switched to the 1 remaining HDMI port on the tv. Storm came through today and fried the box and 1 remaining functional port. Now I have a HD TV with no functioning HDMI ports.

1. What is happening?
2. Think the TV can be fixed?
3. How do I prevent? Switch to Uverse? Sat not option
4. Think I will have any luck getting TWC to compensate?

7/12/2010 10:35:43 PM

this thread makes me sad. And it's sounding a lot like you need a TV repair dude or a new tv

In the future I would get one of those $20 automatic hdmi switchers from monoprice. Hopefully it will cook your $20 hub instead of your $500 TV, and the nice ones have true switching instead of retransmitting.

also, since when does HDMI degrade? It's a digital signal - degradation results in that blocky business you see on OTA digital TV signals, its definitely not like analog degradation of lore. In my experience it either works or it doesn't, degradation could cause it to no longer function - but it's not going to 'look different' - the switch is not recompressing it frame-by-frame and resending it to your TV.

7/13/2010 12:55:26 AM

^He's not talking about degrading the HDMI. The surge protector goes between the cable connection and the cable box. It will slightly degrade any analog channels through to the box, but digital shouldn't really be affected - unless the bandwidth of the filter isn't enough to allow the full range of channels through. Then you could be affected by picture breakups of fringe channels, until the point where no channels are received.

7/13/2010 1:55:20 AM

A quality surge protector won't cause any issues with TWC, at least mine hasn't that I'm aware of.

7/13/2010 9:37:07 AM

just to clarify: I'm talking about a surge protector for the coaxl. Sounds like I need a high end surge protector that will handle the coaxl.

Think I will have any luck getting TWC to compensate me?

7/13/2010 9:43:02 AM

Probably not. You could make a home owner's insurance claim, but they'd want someone to look at it to verify that lightning did kill and you didn't just fuck with it.

7/13/2010 10:28:06 AM

Get your surge protector for the coax.

^ Agreed. File a ins claim on lightening. TWC aint gonna do shit for ya. Best you could do is complain and maybe get a free bump on service or something.

7/13/2010 11:08:42 AM

This sucks. Never plug anything directly into the wall that you care about. surge protectors are well worth there cost

7/13/2010 11:25:55 AM

totally agree about surge protector. TWC tech told me not to use one...Looks like I'll be going to Uverse.

7/13/2010 12:41:17 PM

thanks BCP - I missed that part. My thinking was I don't care about the twc box, let it cook and they can send me out a new one.

And for what it's worth my brief experiences with U-Verse were far worth it

7/14/2010 3:23:15 PM