NTL MMDS Service

eleMental

hi all
jsut wondering if anyone else using the NTL *shudder* MMDS service has noticed a really poor decline in service in the last week or so? Almost every night no matter what channel Iim watching sometime after 10pm the picture goes all scratchy and pixelated, the sound continues for a bit then stops, then the whole thing hangs and I lose all my channels. Rebooting always yields the following:
* Your NTL box is being updated message
* There is no service available message
* Err 106 Please unplug at the mains etc etc
its very frustrating as it happened in the middle of a movie on Sunday and in the middle of Desperate Housewives last night. anyone else noticed this?

Eoin

eleMental wrote:

hi all
jsut wondering if anyone else using the NTL *shudder* MMDS service has noticed a really poor decline in service in the last week or so? Almost every night no matter what channel Iim watching sometime after 10pm the picture goes all scratchy and pixelated, the sound continues for a bit then stops, then the whole thing hangs and I lose all my channels. Rebooting always yields the following:
* Your NTL box is being updated message
* There is no service available message
* Err 106 Please unplug at the mains etc etc
its very frustrating as it happened in the middle of a movie on Sunday and in the middle of Desperate Housewives last night. anyone else noticed this?

Our reception is very poor too; it's not that uncommon to lose picture and sound regularly. We only reboot when the set has lost some of the channels - Sky channels in particular tend to disappear once in a while for some reason, but the reboot works fine.

We haven't really had a decent service since we moved in to the place in December, but it does seem even worse these days. I very much doubt that there is anything that NTL can/will do to fix the problem

mikedragon32

Our second box had that problem a couple of weeks ago. What a pain! One of the reasons we're looking to move to sky.

I reckon the picture and sound quality is appaling. We had sky before we moved to Charlesland and I've never been happy with the quality, especially as we're paying the same amount for it. No stereo signal is a pain too.

Eoin

mikedragon32 wrote:

Our second box had that problem a couple of weeks ago. What a pain! One of the reasons we're looking to move to sky.

I reckon the picture and sound quality is appaling. We had sky before we moved to Charlesland and I've never been happy with the quality, especially as we're paying the same amount for it. No stereo signal is a pain too.

Would love to get Sky in (particularly the Sky+), but seeing as we're in a 2 bed apartment, we have to see if the people above us want to share a dish.

Plenty

I have noticed that the picture freezes temporarily and get very pixelated, but the digi-box does not need to be rebooted!

I nearly reminds me of when we had use an aerial mast instead of cable when I was living in my Mum's and on a really sunny days regardless of it being warm or not, the TV reception would be brutal! NTL seems to follow a similar trend. That's just my observation.:)

Sparks115

We have noticed that too lately and some stations are missing some evenings or they just disappear!!! Also for the last week when I turn on my TV in my sitting room it says I have not subscribbed to any channels!!! so I have to reboot twice to get it going..... We are going to switch to Sky too as we are just fed up with the bad signal and bad service from NTL.

mikedragon32

INCH wrote:

We have noticed that too lately and some stations are missing some evenings or they just disappear!!! Also for the last week when I turn on my TV in my sitting room it says I have not subscribbed to any channels!!! so I have to reboot twice to get it going..... We are going to switch to Sky too as we are just fed up with the bad signal and bad service from NTL.

We used to get that, so we kicked up a fuss and got two lovely tiny decoder boxes. They don't seem to have that problem you mention, but the picture and sound are still terrible.

Eoin_s, if you do get an agreement to share a dish, Sky won't install the equipment (you need a special antenna on the dish, but it looks the same as the standard one), so you'll have to go to an independent installer to do the job for you. Sky+ has got to be a runner. I want to watch ARL, Super 14 and Tri-nations (even NPC) live but can never stay awake, so if I could pause live TV as I drift off, I'd be sorted!:D

Marcais

Plenty wrote:

I have noticed that the picture freezes temporarily and get very pixelated, but the digi-box does not need to be rebooted!

I nearly reminds me of when we had use an aerial mast instead of cable when I was living in my Mum's and on a really sunny days regardless of it being warm or not, the TV reception would be brutal! NTL seems to follow a similar trend. That's just my observation.:)

I'm getting very fcukin "pixelated" myself with NTL. ps. Inch, if stations disappear, press the help button and then the yellow button to reboot.

I'd switch but want Setanta for the GAA and other sports. I bet if NTL get enough "threats" they might consider providing something better.

matt-dublin

thats strange cos mine works perfectly up in the crescent...

Mullie

NTL are notoriously bad! I'm up in the Court and we have problems on a nightly basis.
The sound goes out of sync with the picture and occasionally the picture disappears and reappears as if to 'catch up' with the sound! Its like a badly dubbed movie.

shellie11

eleMental wrote:

hi all
jsut wondering if anyone else using the NTL *shudder* MMDS service has noticed a really poor decline in service in the last week or so? Almost every night no matter what channel Iim watching sometime after 10pm the picture goes all scratchy and pixelated, the sound continues for a bit then stops, then the whole thing hangs and I lose all my channels. Rebooting always yields the following:
* Your NTL box is being updated message
* There is no service available message
* Err 106 Please unplug at the mains etc etc
its very frustrating as it happened in the middle of a movie on Sunday and in the middle of Desperate Housewives last night. anyone else noticed this?

I work in Ntl,and yeh mmds will often go like that...if error 1014 or anything like that continually comes up the box needs to be swapped out!!

LMC

Mullie wrote:

NTL are notoriously bad! I'm up in the Court and we have problems on a nightly basis.
The sound goes out of sync with the picture and occasionally the picture disappears and reappears as if to 'catch up' with the sound! Its like a badly dubbed movie.

I'm in the Court too and have the exact problem. But recently it went off completely for what seemed like an age (especially when your in the middle of watching a movie) and then just came back on again

eleMental

i called them end of last week to explain the problem and she did something that sent a "booster signal" to the box and then told me to ring back when im infront of the telly to call out some readings to her (which ive not done). she said if the problem continued that theyd send an engineer out to check it.

i said that i knew for a fact that alot of other people on the same MMDS service are having the same problem and would it not be alot quicker and cheaper for them to send someone out to check the signal emittor thing as its clearly a problem there and not local to my TV.

but she just kept repeating over and over and over again that they need to eliminate the chance of it being just my set-top thing. having dealt with ntl's complete and utter ineptitude for the last 6 years im not putting myself through sitting around for days on end waiting for engineers that never turn up ever. instead im just going to wait and how it goes. my nerves couldnt stand another debacle dealing with their rubbish customer support service.

mikedragon32

eleMental, that reminds me of when we first got NTL in.

Because they hadn't got the community receiver in yet, we had an aerial on our roof, as did some of our neighbours.

The problem was that the aerial, when it was windy, scraped the roof/chimneystack, causing a terrible screeching noise.

We rang and asked if they could do something about it and told us it would cost us money (I can't remember how much). We refused and told them if they couldn't resolve the situation we'd just have to switch to Sky, and they could send the engineer to remove the equipment from our property.

Next day we received a call and they told us that they could remove the aerial and hook us up to the community system, which they did.

I asked the engineer, when he arrived a week later, why they couldn't have just done it in the first place, and he said that they weren't replacing the aerials unless people kicked up enough fuss, and only then replacing them for the customers who requested it. They had no intention of removing aerials otherwise and no intention of informing customers that their aerials could be removed!

I've had enough of crap picture/terrible sound and everything else NTL has to offer. Sky are coming next week! Yay!:D

jpbarry

Bad news for those hoping to get an improved service from Sky - bad news.
I have had Sky HD for over a year and am currently suffering my second prolonged bout of pixellation and freezing. I was on the phone with a technician who ran me through some fixes but with no success.

LEIN

First of all this is an NTL thread and second, its over 3 years old.

Your post would be better heard in the satellite forum anyway.