Here we go.

I got a voicemail from Cox New England. They asked that I call them so I did.

The first annoyance is that stupid interactive response system. I just screamed “AGENT” at it.

When I was finally connected the representative tried the line that it was my television though she did clam up when I told her the following:

1) We’ve had the television for some time and it hadn’t exhibited the behavior shown below.

2) I mentioned to the representative that the indicator clearly has the phrase ‘on cable box remote’

3) I also mentioned the cable box feeds its signal via component. So the how would the TV have any knowledge that it was a cable signal?

The end result, I’m going to trade the box for another one. In fact I may just leave the box disconnected and plug the coax directly into the television to see if the behavior still manifests itself. If it doesn’t then guess what, it’s the god damned cable box!

It isn’t a total disruption of service, instead it’s an annoyance. And I have far too many of those in my life to let Cox get away with this. As I’ve said before the cable box is pretty much a cable modem with a video codec, and it’s probably got a Linux based OS. So it’s not all that complex.