Making sense of the numbers

[UCBearcat]

I've been tooling around the diagnostic menus in my HDHR Prime. I recently removed an unecessary split in my coax to get a little better signal. I know about the -10 to 10 dBmV bit.. zero being perfect.
I'm just curious what the two different levels are all about... See -5dBmV and 2dBmV
Which one is the true indication of signal strength? I snagged this from the RF Statistics menu on my STA1520 Tuning Adapter from TWC.

CURRENT FDC
Freq: 112.000 MHz
DAVIC: Connected
Status: Locked
Level: -5 dBmV
Seconds: 661
Corr Bytes: 161
Uncor Blks: 336
Errs Avg/Inst: 0 / 0
Total Bytes: 116850160
S/N: 31 dB
CURRENT QAM
Freq: 651.000 MHz
Tuning Mode: QAM-256
Status: Locked
Level: 2 dBmV

[richard1980]

Signal level varies by frequency. At 112.000 MHz, your signal level is -5 dB. At 651.000 MHz, your signal level is 2 dB.

[UCBearcat]

Thanks for the reply Richard.
I've read that temperature can affect signal, however how about rain and humidity. We've seen a ton of rain, unseasonably high temps... and humidity here lately. I checked my signal tonights and it was reading -11 and -6 for those two same readings.
Could I really see that much of a dip due to weather and humidity??

[adam1991]

Moisture most certainly can affect things, if any of the coax cabling/connectors along the way are old/compromised.

[UCBearcat]

I know it's an old thread, but sort of a continuation... sort of.

So I finally had the chance to rewire the coax in my house to increase signal strength and eliminate uneccessary runs... It has only been a couple days, but I've noticed some oddities since the change. Might be coincedence, but I'm wondering now if my signal is too strong. Strange things such as more frequent TA tuning timeouts, a couple recordings saying no signal, and tuners on the Prime stuck showing "Resource Lock - none." I had to reboot the Prime to clear the resource locks.
Could be coincidence, but I didn't see much of this prior to my rewiring.

Here is what changed...
-replaced a 100 ft run of coax (half RG59, half RG6) with a 25ft run(RG6) <it was old wiring from previous homeowner; long story>
-removed 2-way splitter outside of house (1GHz rated) and replaced it with 2-way splitter (2.4GHz rated) to inside of house

The results (other than less wire clutter), was a significant bump in signal. In my initial post above, I stated i was seeing -5dbmV and 2dbmV in my TA menu. Now, after the rewiring, I regularly see -1dBmv and 9dBmv. SNR sits around 33dB. While these fall within spec, I've noticed that the HDHR Prime Tuner reports much higher numbers. It appears that the higher frequencies are really strong. For example, I see the following in the Prime interface:


Virtual Channel 1133 ANPLHD
Frequency 597.000 MHz
Program Number 1037
Authorization subscribed
CCI Protection protected-copyonce
CGMS Protection n/a
Modulation Lock qam256
PCR Lock locked
Signal Strength 100% (11.3 dBmV)
Signal Quality 100% (36.8 dB)
Symbol Quality 100%

I have seen these numbers as high as 12.5dBmV on other channels since the rewire.
Should I be concerned with these numbers?

As always, thanks for reading!!