Television interference with electronic ballast?
 

Anyone else experience very poor television reception with Metal halide electronic ballasts on? Any way to minimize this?

I have a little static on my t.v. if I have it on. I just swapped out my mh light to T5s and problem gone.

is your balast grounded properly

When I was in the Navy I would videotape on the flightdeck and the radar would interfere every sweep of the radar. I was told to wrap the camera in aluminum foil and it worked so I'm thinking it should work since the radar outputs a lot more, I would be careful not to cover the ventilation louvers. Or make a metal box with fans and place the ballast inside.

I had this problem with an ancient TV. I just bought a cheap new one and the problem is gone :)

try plugging it into a non related circuit

I have the wire coming from the pendant, and the ballast grounded through the power cord. It is on it's own wall outlet with a timer.

I think all of the affected TV's are on the same circuit because when the circuit breaker pops, I have no power to any of those rooms. The TV's in my room, the next room, and the kitchen downstairs under the tank are all affected.

The ballast is an Icecap 175w electronic with a PFO pendant. The ballast is in a ballast box.

Any other suggestions? I may try wrapping it in aluminum foil.

A large grounding wire, if the tv has one, can cause this. We had a copper house grounding wire so large it was functioning as a loop antenna, and the passing chatter from the airplanes inbound to a major airport was storing itself as static charge, which would, then, get this, leak from the wire into various tellies throughout the house, probably via the cable system, since only the large-screen tv and the cable box was grounded. It took an electrician who actually installed the airport systems to recognize it because of the pattern of the interference.

So yes, I will believe a tv receiver can pick up the darndest things.