"Please Wait" - issues with digital cable

[Hal]

Hello. I hope that this forum is a good place to ask this question.

I live in New York and have digital cable. From time to time, the screen goes black and a "Please Wait" notice appears. Normally this lasts only a few seconds, but lately it is more frequent and lasts longer.

Is this normal?

When I phone the cable company they simply tell me to reboot by unplugging and replugging. But at this rate I almost need to unplug and reboot every day before I start watching TV.

Any thoughts or advice are appreciated.

Thanks.

[N. Abstentia]

Definitely call them and have them try to fix the problem.

Then when you hang up, call DirecTV. You'll be glad you did :)

[Luvin Da Blues]

I just went thru this with my cable. It turned out to be a rotted cable drop. Book a service call and have them check the signal strength and quality at the service entrance. If you are using splitters inside check them also.

[Woochifer]

If you can view the analog channels, look at those and see if you have any degradation in the picture quality. The thing about digital is that it's all or nothing, and won't get much warning if your bandwidth is getting dropping close to the minimum threshold. The analog channel is a much better indicator of whether you're getting a weak/corrupted signal.

As the others suggested, just book a service call if this is showing up all the time. We had a picture quality issue pop up last year, and it turned out that the cable was getting pinched on the side of the house and moisture had rotted out the cable.