Florescent light - Digital TV interference.

[frankft2000]

Had a customer call today. She has over the air digital HD TV. She was watching TV, picture was great, turned on the over head 4' T-8 fixtures, and the signal on the TV goes out. Turns the lights off, the TV station comes back on. Some research is leading me towards RFI filtering, but I have no clue on where to start. Anybody ran into this before?

 

[GUNNING]

CHEAP BALLAST

CHEAP BALLAST

three way on the swt.
one pole goes to the light


one to the cable box.


Might want to replace the ballast with a better ballast.

 

[wolfman56]

Yes I have!

In my case when the kitchen lights were turned on the satellite TV in the family room went crazy!
I found that the kitchen was originally wired with one light switch. Someone had installed three way switching later. They did the usual handyman thing, "cut off the ground wire it doesn't do anything any how". When I repaired the ground wires the problem was gone.

Grounding issues will mess with satellite TV!

Rick

 

[MIEngineer]

We had a recent similar situation. Changed a large high bay work area from 400W MH to 6 lamp fluorescents for energy savings. Now we are getting reports that the techs desktop FM radios have static. Any special ballast rating I should be looking for?

 

[grich]

If the ballast is properly grounded, try a different brand of ballast, or another of the same model you have...you might just have one bad apple from the production run. Have had a couple of issues with radio/TV interference from T8 ballasts at buildings I take care of, and the ballast swap has always worked.