Waves/lines in all screens in house

by saitokokeimei Oct 2, 2008 6:02PM PDT

I know I seem to have a lot of stupid problems I come to this forum with, but here goes.

All the TV's (CRT and LCD HDTV) and CRT monitors in this house have wavy lines that flow up the screen from the bottom. It's better or worse at times, better or worse on some cable channels, and does it even when using game consoles or DVD players. My LCD monitor I'm on right now doesn't have lines, but it has some obvious fuzziness to its pixels at times - you can definitely see it with a gray website background. I have even had this problem on my DS and gameboys years ago.

I can't seem to find anyone else that's having this problem. Have any of you? What could cause it? I think it's static in this house, but wanted to find out what it really is. The static makes me itch and I use anti static carpet treatment, but even before that we've never had the problem of shocking each other with static. You can't do it, but you definitely itch a little and the tvs are fubar.

It's just a stupid problem and I'd like it to stop if anyone has any idea *** is goin on. Seriously, I begin to think I'm just losing my mind. Is this something screens normally do, and are my eyes just picking it up? Because I do notice stupid things.

We have a lot of electronics in this small house and Alabama homes are definitely PITIFULLY MADE. So is there some kind of grounding problem I should be looking for?

Discussion is locked

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Hmm

by bevillan Oct 3, 2008 1:26AM PDT

I'm no electrician, but it sure sounds like something with your circuitry is awry. The problem seems way too big to be some sort of large magnetic field messing with your displays.

Just to be sure it is not your TVs, take your LCD HDTV to a friend's house, plug it into their outlet and see if the lines continue.

To those more informed than me - If his circuitry is the problem, would getting a UPS power component for his LCD HDTV be a good solution to try?

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sounds like

by givemeaname Oct 3, 2008 6:55AM PDT

a grounding problem.

Your going to have to call an electrician.

something you can try before:

try hooking up one of the tv's to a plug that is on a diffrent breaker. Noramly the electrical/breaker box is brocken up into areas; Kitchen outlets, water heat, stove, AC/Heater, bathrooms, garage, house outlet (1st & 2nd story)....
each should be labled on the breaker box...
if the kitchen is on a separate breaker just run an extension cord to an outlet in there (wait until you have a day that lines show up on the tv's) see if the line are still there.
The grounding problem could be the 1 breaker ( or wiring for that 1 breaker) or the whole breaker box needs to be re-grounded properly.

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Sounds very strang.

by jcrobso Oct 3, 2008 7:29AM PDT

LCD is not affected by magnetic fields, the CRT can be.
Try unhooking all of the inputs except the DVD player and see what happens. John

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thanks for the suggestions

by saitokokeimei Oct 3, 2008 10:57AM PDT

It does it on all the breaker systems but I admit I've never tried the kitchen area. I have a window air conditioner plugged up beside my desk here, into a 220 outlet. It's different breakers and different outlets and all, but when I turn it on my speakers pop a little and my monitor can dim for a quick second. Hell, for that matter, everything in the house dims when the central heat and air comes on. This is how homes are here and I've just gotten used to that, but this whole static problem is something I want to have solved, as stupid as the problem seems. By the way, the Alabama Power company is pathetic and we can lose electricity when it sprinkles outside, or even on sunny days.

Before I used to treat the carpets, I used to itch in certain rooms unbearably. I stopped using the treatment so much lately and the lines have gotten bad. Obviously a way to help the problem there is to keep using the stuff - but this isn't something I should normally be having to do, right? I just wanted to see if anyone else knew what was going on.

Keeping wires separated or untwisted, connecting as few devices as possible to tvs, keeping wires lifted off the carpet whenever possible - those are things I've been doing and it does help the problem, but it doesn't solve it. I bought a static-shielded composite s-video cable from madcats for my previous-gen consoles that made the lines almost never come back, but I haven't seen another one of those. We have asked a cable dude about it when he was out installing broadband years ago, and he said the lines in the tv happen when it's not grounded right or somethin and he'd check it. He fixed problems with our lower channels having lines, but the problem I'm talking about is with everything having lines regardless of cable or not. Another interesting thing to note, I swear I'm not making stuff up, is that you can take a piece of paper and stick it to the wall with static in this house sometimes.

Is the problem just bad electrical wiring in general? As I said, we've never had a problem with static shock, but there definitely seems to be something in the carpet. I know computers but I know NOTHING about electricity, so I really have no idea what could be causing this.

Waves/lines in all screens in house

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