I figured out what went wrong with my damn cable... I went digging around my apartment and went through all the utility boxes. I found one with a bunch of coaxial cables in it. I marked all SEVEN coaxial cables, where only TWO are plugged in:



And as you can see, two of the cables are cut for no reason and one has duct tape on it. LOL. No sh_t! I don't know why they're there if they've been cut... I also don't know why the box and wires have been partially spraypainted. lol.

The two coaxial cables plugged into the splitter are the two active ones. (Well, that's my guess since I have a router plugged into a coax port in my office, and that router seems to work. That suggests to me that one of the two wires plugged into the splitter is also connected to the office coax port.) All the others are inactive.

This means: if someone were to come in tomorrow to "professionally install" my cable box, they'd likely be plugging and unplugging the different coaxial cables... and I'd be paying $59 for that. And if they had to add plug tips to the two randomly cut cables (and remove the duct tape from the third LOL), I'd probably have to pay for that too. No thanks! I'll do that myself! I'll figure out how to do it if I have to. I already have my own wire strippers, wire cutters, etc..