Thread: Can't get cable working, any ideas?

I recently moved across town, and had my cable switched to the new location. This house has many different cable outlets, lots of random cables and wires running everywhere, and it even confused the cable guy. The landlord didn't know what all the different outlets and cables were for, either. He simply said something about previous tenant's wiring the house for "wi-fi" which I didn't really understand, but ok.
So the cable guy tests the roommate's big tv out in the living room after hooking it all up. It works great! I ask him what I need to do to get it in my bedroom which is just opposite the wall in which the main tv in the living room is plugged into. He says just use a splitter, and shows me how to connect it.
So here I am with TWO cable outlets (well one is an actual outlet, and the other is a cable that is running from out of the ceiling) in my bedroom. I tried both of them, and the channel setup on my TV recognizes only 4 digital TV channels (not regular ones like it used to). I at first thought it was something to do with my TV but I troubleshooted that fairly well to determine the TV itself was not the problem; it really could not pick up a signal, apparently, for any other channels. The DTV channels are weird and I don't like them, I just want the regular cable in there.
One of the cable outlets only found ONE of these channels. The second I tried is the one that gave me 4 channels. Well, it gave me 5 but then in my attempt to re-do the channel setup to fix it and get all of them, that channel is now no longer available. I will probably just call the cable company (Comcast) and see what the hell is going on, but wanted to see if anyone else had any thoughts.
Right now the only TV working with cable right now is the roommate's TV in the living room, with the direct line-in from the main line. His bedroom is so small there is nowhere for him to spend his time except using the tv. Which is fine, but that just means I reallllly need to get cable working in my bedroom.

The way hoses are supposed to be wired these days is called home run, there is a "home point" usually near the grounding point where all cable outlets run to, This is easy to find and set up, however 1970's electricians and bad contractors insist on chaining splitters outlet to outlet, this is more difficult to set up because generally there is no MAP of what chains to where.

Easiest solution is to call the landlord and request permission to have an outlet installed. Then call comcast, and request that, it should be $20, and there are some stipulations on what can be done at the house but those depend on your LOCAL area, so I cannot tell you this nor can the guy on the phone. You will have to wait for the tech unfortunately. Which means its possible he will tell you it cannot be done and you have to use a third party of some sort, generally this means the outlet cost went up into the hundreds of dollars instead of $20. The guy who comes out may also be able to locate and just activate the existing outlet I think that costs $12 not sure why but that is another story.

It is likely the outlets you are getting channels off of are just pulling in over the air signal and not cable signal, so that's why you are getting such a small selection.