Magnet - any use??

mel123

Hi, i am thinking about getting Magnet TV, basically NTL have messed me around now for 5 weeks running, all i want is a bloody new connection in a new house so i can watch TV. I wont go into it. So anyway, just looking for comments on these guys before i jump into a contract with them??

watty

Not for TV. Very few channels and IP based. Problems adding extra "receivers".

Good for Broadband.

It's either NTL (UPC) for lots of channels or Satellite dish (45 decent free channels, inc all BBC/ITV, no sub, once off cost, higher quality than Cable) or Sky Satellite (more channels than NTL and higher quality). You can get Sky and cancel after a year and still have all the free channels.

paulm17781

I'm pretty certain (though could be mistaken) that Magnet only offer TV in certain developments these days. I don't think anyone can get the service anymore.

falteringstar

Go for it, IF you are in one of their FTTH (Fiber to the Home) Developments.

Their broadband is by far the best I've ever had. We have the 4 Meg package, which is actually often at about the 5 Meg mark, and has never dropped below 4 Megs... touch wood. Their upload speed is crazy at about 50Megs!!



As far as TV goes, it is in my opinion just as good as NTL. I dont know exactly which package we have, but it has all of these channels, RTE1, RTE2, TV3, TG4, Setanta, Channel 6, BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, BBC4, UTV, Channel 4, E4, More4, Sky One, Sky Two, Sky Three, and so on.... Im sure their website gives a detailed list, but it is a very good package.

The only criticism I have of the Television package is the picture quality. It looks very good and very clear on my 28" CRT Beko, better than NTL infact, not as good as Sky. However on my 32" Sharp LCD I noticed that the picture was blocky, not pixelated though, literally could see that the picture was made up of blocks. Mind you I never raised that with them so I dont know what exactly it was, and I had to put NTL in there due to a contract

DingDong

The setup magnet have in the FTTH looks great. I was having a nose at their equipment the other day and it looks impressive. I had a friend who worked for them at one stage and said they were have a few problems with the tv end of thing don't know if its still the same.
The current customer service in UPC is still piss poor. It cant go on for ever the new owners have been over busting some balls over it. I don't know what their playing at. Its not like their not spend alot to try fix it.

DrNuyenVanFaulk

I've had Magnet Broadband, TV and Phone in an FFTH area for 6 months now.

- The service has never dropped
- No modem issues; all devices plug straight into the wall and get a global IP address
- TV is very excellent; image quality is beautiful on my 720p tv
- Phone is very good. Free local and national calls; occasional issues with IP adaptor needing to be switched ON/OFF (maybe once a month)
- Broadband... wow. 2 MEGABYTES per second. As in, download half an MP3 in a second. Unreal! Upload speeds are the same, almost. Only ping test has been on Counter Strike: Source, where ping to an English server is about 10.

If you live in an are where Magnet provide this package, an area with FFTH, absolutely 100% GO FOR IT!

Parents are currently inquiring about swapping from Eircom to Magnet in non-FFTH area. Am very curious to see how the service goes.

watty

I think they only doing DSL for Buisness. It too easily does not have enough bandwidth for TV.

smcelhinney

mel123 wrote: »

Hi, i am thinking about getting Magnet TV, basically NTL have messed me around now for 5 weeks running, all i want is a bloody new connection in a new house so i can watch TV. I wont go into it. So anyway, just looking for comments on these guys before i jump into a contract with them??

God yeah!

Im in FTTH development, with the 8Mb connection which is actually running at 17Mb up and down for me (not many people here have it).

IPTV is grand, pay through the teeth for extra channels & receivers, but its god quality, never had any major problems.

Cant say enough about their helpline either. Great guys.

Go for it!

subway

i have magnet adsl with the iptv offering.
its grand, and the iptv doenst interfere with the broadband (separate lines)
i get 8 meg download (maxxed out) while watching tv, however they no longer offer this to new customers, and everytime the rejig the lineup we lose a couple more chanels so eventually switched back to ntl for tv.

magnet for the unlimited 8 meg connection all the way tho!

nice1franko

We have Magnet for phone, broadband and tv.

The telly is crap: interface is horrible and slow nd picture quality often breaks up/gets pixelated.

Phone is alright but have had problems with it: sometimes no dialtone and sometimes people ring and get that error tone (do doo dooooo, do doo dooooo - know that one hehe) and I'm holding the bloody thing in my hand.

The broadband is feckin super tho. Have had it bb before from both eircom and esat and it pisses all over them both.

cros13

reposting what i said elsewhere:

I moved to portlaoise mainly because of magnet ftth.

I was on ftth (verizon fios) in the US
Could'nt live without it. My employer
sold Magnet some of the equipment used
to build the network.

6 months. 1 outage for 3 hours due to an issue with the
local comms room and some nearby construction work.
V Happy with customer support. FTTH is another world.
The TV is fine, the concerns others have posted about the TV
is only applicable to the DSL service as FTTH would'nt have
those problems. My ping to ftp.heanet.ie is 3ms or less.
Busy times the ping went up to 4ms but v. rare

Only issue I have is i'd like to see a HD IPTV service.

BC

I have magnet FTTH. I have TV & phone but no broadband and find the tv awful. The picture quality is fine most of the time (32inch LG LCD) but every now and then it gets blocky. Its the sound i have a major problem. It keeps getting distorted so that the sound is a couple of seconds behind the picture. I have to turn off the box and turn it back on again to reset it. Its happening on average every 30-40 minutes and is really frustrating.

Also the menu seems to always have the wrong programme listing which is really irritating and the menu is incredibly slow compared to sky.

In fairness I haven't phoned them about the TV yet as I had other issues with the phone that i was sorting out. I did find their helpline very good on the phone issues will have to see how far i get on the tv issues.

cros13

Seriously mate, you should call them.
I've never had any of those problems.
Granted the menus are a bit slow, I traced
that to the remote. Menus are nippy on the
amino box using my universal remote.

Seemed to be the time the remote was taking
to send the full command.
The box is an Amino AmiNET110.

I've never used the phone service as I use another
VoIP provider. I reconfigured the magnet-provided
ATA box to access my provider and I've had no issues.

The one thing I did find was that most consumer routers
can't handle the bandwidth I was using. Just did'nt have the
throughput to handle torrent over the magnet link.
So I switched to a Cisco ASA 5505 and everything worked OK.

Mizu_Ger

BC wrote: »

I have magnet FTTH. I have TV & phone but no broadband and find the tv awful. The picture quality is fine most of the time (32inch LG LCD) but every now and then it gets blocky. Its the sound i have a major problem. It keeps getting distorted so that the sound is a couple of seconds behind the picture. I have to turn off the box and turn it back on again to reset it. Its happening on average every 30-40 minutes and is really frustrating.

I am with Magnet too (FTTH). I've had the problem with sound out of sync too, but an upgrade came down the line last week and after talking to Magnet it was to fix the sync problem. The EPG is a bit crap though. Otherwise everything is fine. The Broadband is excellent (reaches 15Mbs, even though I am on the 8Mbs package).

The biggest problem I have with the service is the TV. You get one settop box with the package, but it only has one tuner. To watch one channel and record another you need to rent a second one (8euro a month, I think). That's a major pain in the back side. Its also impossible to set my HDD recorder to tape a program over a week or 2 when I'm away (my HDD recorder cannot change the channel and the settop box automatically switches off after a few hours if not being used). I have emailled them about any plans for a multi-tuner recording settop box, but the reply i got said that they have no plans. Its by far the biggest problem with their service.

EDIT: If the tuner problem bothers anyone else, it would be worth sending them an email to highlight it. I've done it already, but if more people contact them they might address it.

Mizu_Ger

I emailed Magnet about their STB for the TV and got the following reply:

Yes there are plans for new STB but we are still waiting for our IPTV engineers to finish up tests and chose a vendor. When we will have them on the market we will inform all customers about that. The plans are to change to HD, Surround System and a Hard Drive platform. At the moment Amino STB can only transmit 1 multicast channel.

This sounds good, but don't know what the timelines are.

Costanza78

Great for broadband - awful for TV, everything is so slow from the booting up, downloading of listings, but especially the moving through listings/menu. It is driving me crazy... If anyone knows of way to use another box instead please advise!

PS I agree with a previous post on extortionate pricing for extra channels...

If everyone that reads this thread and has a similar problem e-mails them, I am sure that eventually they will look at this problem.

Here is the e-mail address:
support@magnet.ie

boogs

cros13 wrote: »

Menus are nippy on the
amino box using my universal remote.

Was trying to find out the code to use with my universal remote to use it with the Amino box. Any idea what it is?

nice1franko

is that the logitech univeral remote that was on ibood a while ago?

i think it was amino 350 or something. afair there was only 1 or 2 models listed for amino.

btw, it didnt make any difference to menu speed for me

cros13

I use a Logitech Harmony 890.
The Amino settings i downloaded were crap so
I just recorded from the existing remote.