University of Illinois at Chicago: Campus Housing — 818 S. Wolcott Avenue (Suite 220), Chicago, Illinois 60612 — 312-355-6300

HTV, Campus Housing Television

Cable TV Troubleshooting Suggestions

SSR residents, make sure your TV is plugged into the jack which shares a box with your internet and phone jack.

Has your cable jack been activated?

Make sure your cable is activated. We put terminators which are special devices that lock out cable tv for rooms that have not requested it. Look at where the cable attaches to the wall. Here is an example of a jack without a terminator. If your cable jack looks like this, the terminator (circled in green) needs to be removed. Click here sign up for cable. If you already have signed up for cable, and the terminator has not been removed, click here to submit a problem.

Inactive Jack

Active Jack

If your cable jack looks like this, then your cable has already been activated. (Note: MRH & PSR does not use terminators; cable is turned on and off through closets located on each floor. All jacks will look like this one.)

Is your TV set up for cable?

If you’re only getting channels numbers less than 13, you need to make sure your TV is set to cable mode. Unfortunately, there’s no single method for determining this.

Cable Menu

Set TV to Cable

Look for a button on your TV or remote that says something like MENU or SETUP or something similar. Then look for something that says ANTENNA or INPUT or CABLE basically something that helps the TV determine if it’s looking for channels up in the cable range (those channels up in the 40’s and 50's). Set that to CATV or HRC or CABLE or something similar. (See how confusing this can be?)

Autoprogram TV

After that, you may need to reset your channel lineup. This is generally done through the menu as AUTOPROGRAM or CHANNEL SELECT or ADD CH(annel), (a tedious method, since you'll have to go through one by one adding channels, but better than not getting cable).

If you have done this, and your cable still doesn’t work, please visit Broken/Damaged Cable & Channel Outages.