We have this Pioneer PDP-4271HD Flatscreen that also have a Cable Card in the back. Never have had a problem with it till Sunday Morning. Turned it on, nothing was showing. I switch the Input select, turn my 360 on and its there, same for DVD player. Go Back for TV viewing and nothing. End up having to look at online updates to see who won 24 Hours of Daytona(RX-8 ftw). Give up on it and later in the day try again and the same thing happens. Later find out that the HD only stations that are few in number and pretty much just local TV works fine in the 400+ station range. Have come to the conclusion the TV itself is only showing HD only networks and thats it. I know shit about tvs, I just use them and how to correctly wire stuff into the back of them, so anything is that might fix this issue would be nice.

 

sounds like cable card issues but I've never had a cable card so I'm not sure.

 

First, what do you mean by "nothing"? Static? Black screen? Blue screen? Can you change channels?

Could be any number of things. It might be a configuration issue. Maybe the TV (maybe via the CableCard) is set only to show HD stations. Or maybe it's set to only show digital stations (and the others may be analog). Or maybe a different tuner was selected - do you also have a tuner on the TV itself? Or maybe the CableCard was deactivated / turned off or whatever. Any of these may be as simple as a single button that was pressed by mistake. And of course make sure everything's connected snugly, both at the TV (including the card securely in its slot) and everywhere else your side of the main cable line.

Or maybe your cable provider cut you off (correctly or not). You may need to call "the cable guy."

 

First, you bought a great TV.

Second, it sounds like all your inputs are correct except the one that has the TV signal. However, it seems that input is not "dead" because it will get HD channels. Am I correct?

I think your cable provider needs to reinitialize your cable card.
The cable card technology is based on a great premise; it's 2008 we no longer need to have a set top box.

However, the execution of the technology has been pretty poor.
I think it is now the fourth or fifth generation of cable cards and there is still no version that has two way communications. Therefore there is no pay-per-view and no "On Demand".

I tried to use the cable card slot in my Mitsubishi. It seemed like a good idea, it freed up an input in the back, and it removed a footprint from the components.

I had a similar issue -but all my channels would be the channel 5.
I found a forum where I learned how to reinitialize the card, but I got tired of doing it.

I gave up and got a set top box.

 

We have had the TV for a year, all Cables are still secure and in the correct spots. The Cable Card was put on soon after getting it as to not have a extra controller and a Cable Box.

When its on, its nothing but a black screen. I can put it on like the normal Channel 5, nothing but black Screen, then go to the HD version of the station and it is displayed with no issues.

I can change channels fine, just nothing but Black screen on them, unless its a HD version of the station.

 

I think the first call should be to your cable company.

There is a real good chance that they will just reinitialize the card and it will start working again.

I am curious, prior to this did your TV Guide On Screen work correctly?
That was another thing that drove me nuts -the guide never updated with the Cable Card.

 

The TV Guide worked(which I hate, the TV Guide doesn't go in Channel Order, but there own order making it worthless). But the tv is fine now, Charter "somehow" flipped a switched killing all of are Cable to the tv. Now I wish they would jsut fix are net, I logged on WoW and had a 17,987 Ping constant..........

 

OMG -I forgot about that!
Yeah, the TV Guide Onscreen follows its own arbitrary channel grouping.
You could set the channel line up if you wanted, but it was a nightmare trying to remember "27 is 8, 51 is 27, 220 is 51..."  

Also, when I had the Cable Card I remembered trying to schedule a recording for three days out and I would see "No Program Data".

I figured that the data would eventually populate, but that day would come and there would still be no data. But even though I was on a "No Program Data" day, I would look and see that in four days the data was populated again.

It was almost like someone was in charge of updating the TV Guide, forgot, and then decided to start again but didn't have the data for the current week.

Like I said, the concept of the Cable Card is gold, but the execution is copper.

 

We have a Box on a different tv and I don't mind the extra controller as it was setup correcting when put in so it did work as a functioning Universal remote.

But the TV Guide guide is worthless, and because of it I rarely watch any HBO or other movie channels due to it being such a pain in the ass to find it.