Constant Signal Breakup

belmulletman

Hi All,
I'm in D8. and over the past 2 or so weeks, i've had alot of breakup in service. I have the UPC DVR, and the signal just goes all blocky and the audio drops. it's not a constant thing, but at the moment, it's averaging about once an hour! and last for anything from 5 to 30 seconds.
Has anyone else experienced this?? does anyone know why this may be happening?
I've not touched the box, cables or anything.
It was a brand new "wall box" (where the cable comes into the apartment) that i was installed about a week before the DVR which was about 6-8 weeks ago at this stage i suppose.

Cheers in advance,
B.

rockal

Same area, same problem. Perhaps it's due to all the upgrading. Hopefully it will improve when they switch over to the new cables.

blobert

Having the same problem in Dublin 6. Just got a cable point installed in my room last week so the signal was perfect untill a few days ago. Not pleased.

The tax man

belmulletman wrote: »

Hi All,
I have the UPC DVR, and the signal just goes all blocky and the audio drops. it's not a constant thing, but at the moment, it's averaging about once an hour! and last for anything from 5 to 30 seconds.
Has anyone else experienced this?

Yep, happening to my DVR too. Not the usual picture breakup but something that looks alot more severe. Don't know whats causing it cause my signal is fine.
Starting to annoy me a bit now.

belmulletman

well it's good to know it's not just me then. I agree with you taxman, it's not the normal signal breakup (which there was very little of i have to admit), but it's much worse. I hope it is just the network upgrade, as my signal is fine, and always has been in the 4 / 5 years i've had NTL/UPC.
If anyone out there in NTL/UPC reads this, can you chase it up and let us know if this will be a regular thing, or if it's due to network upgrade / maintenance.

Cheers,
B.

Alun

I'm in Bray and have also been getting this recently. It's only really started happening in the last week or so, and is quite severe in that it sometimes lasts for up to 20 or 30 seconds. It's not confined to one channel either.

I had a similar situation in the past when I've noticed signal breakup, and usually then, if I've quickly switched to analogue cable, I've seen very bad intereference on that too possibly from a local source like a badly sparking electric motor or someone welding or such like.

This time though, whenever I've switched over, the analogue signal has been fine.

watty

Contact UPC (NTL/Chorus)

SteM

Same here in the last week or so for me in D24.

belmulletman

it's weird that's is all the way from the city center to Bray. That would rule out any local interference (such as suggested above!)... tick tock UPC, tick tock... get it sorted, or things'll only get worse!!!

Yakuza

Same here (Dublin 3). It's dropping out for 5-20 seconds and then catching up. I was recording Long Way Down and it froze about 35 mins in. The sound was fine, but the picture was stuck.

I was beginning to wonder if it was the box (l'm on my 2nd Pace, the first one packed in after a year or so with "you have not subscribed to this channel" coming up every time I changed channel. I've had my current box for 6 months) but I guess it seems to be a more systemic failure.

I've had upgraded cabling for about 3-4 months now, and to be fair, the signal strength has gone from an average of 32 up to 36, but these cut-outs are blimmin annoying!

the1andonly1

same here in Dundrum, with the DVR, everything was fine up until a couple of weeks ago, and its starting to get more frequent now (once every 2 hours or so). If it isnt specific to the box (yakuza has the pace box) and it isnt region specific, what's going wrong on UPC's end that hasnt been fixed after 2 or 3 weeks?!

Alun

Maybe just a crazy idea, but I've started writing down the time every time this happens (or at least when I notice it). It'd be interesting to see if everyone's getting the picture breakup at the same time. If so, and if it covers a wide enough area, that would tend to point more to a relatively centralised problem than a localised one.

the1andonly1

Well it just happened here, on BBC2 at 10 past 9

The tax man

the1andonly1 wrote: »

Well it just happened here, on BBC2 at 10 past 9

Wasn't watching BBC2 but it happened at 9.10pm for me too. Wasn't watching via dvr but normal digi stb. Headend issue.
Has anyone noticed this happening during the day i.e. before say 6pm?

blobert

Just happened me there 10:50pm.

Worse than usual, no picture for about a minute.

Alun

The tax man wrote: »

Has anyone noticed this happening during the day i.e. before say 6pm?

Yes.

Yesterday I noticed it happening at 07:56, 09:29 and 16:47. Can't remember which channel but probably BBC 1 or 2.

Didn't notice anything last night, but I may have been out of the room at the time.

BraveInca

This is happening for me constantly. Picture freezes for 10-20 seconds.

But much worse than that is that the whole service has gone down multiple times in the last two months. Only once in the evening (no TV at all including analogue cable for all of last Friday night) but frequently in the daytime.

Impossible to get through to NTL or whatever they call themselves. :mad:

I'm in Bray as well.

So I'm gonna take Sky's offer of a free Sky+ box and jump ship at the earliest opportunity.

BraveInca

watty wrote: »

Contact UPC (NTL/Chorus)

ROFLOL

tvbrat

Its been breaking up here since last Friday the 23rd. It seems to happen both day and night and over a range of channels, last night BBC 1,2 on Saturday it was some of the movie channels.

This happened a few months back, It went on for about a week before I got on to them and in all fairness they had a techie out next day.

The problem had " resolved itself " by the time he called and so he could find nothing wrong with the box or signal. He told me that they had done some major work in the Christchurch area, which caused the problems and the office staff had not informed the guys out on the road about the upgrade. I was one of many he had that day with the same problem. He even had a new box with him.

I could be wrong here, but it seems to me that the office staff, when contacted about a breakup problem, and go through the "Did you reboot via yellow button, or un-plug the digibox, assume that there is a problem with the box.

If they had been in contact with the department that deals with the upgrade, they could have saved the time and money of sending out a techie.

Anyway I hope they sort it out soon

p.s. I'm in the Dublin 8 Aera

SteM

The tax man wrote: »

Wasn't watching BBC2 but it happened at 9.10pm for me too. Wasn't watching via dvr but normal digi stb. Headend issue.
Has anyone noticed this happening during the day i.e. before say 6pm?

Same for me, 9:10pm on BBC2 while watching Dragons Den. I switched over the the analogue feed and it was fine.

paulm17781

tvbrat wrote: »

The problem had " resolved itself " by the time he called and so he could find nothing wrong with the box or signal. He told me that they had done some major work in the Christchurch area, which caused the problems and the office staff had not informed the guys out on the road about the upgrade.

I'm very close to Christchurch and have had same issues, I wonder if they'll go away now. Last I noticed it was Saturday.

murpho999

SteM wrote: »

Same for me, 9:10pm on BBC2 while watching Dragons Den. I switched over the the analogue feed and it was fine.

Same here for me in Bray, 9.10 during Dragons' Den. Very Annoying. I quickly changed channel and went back again and it was fine, but I don't know if that fixed it or was the problem just over when I switched back!

It really is very frustrating when this happens but that's UPC/ NTL for you.
Inferior products and service.

Look at what's been happening with them.

No sign of HD service.
DVR is inferior to a Sky+ box. Despite having years to develop it and look at Sky's product. No series link and I find there are serious user friendliness issues with the box. UPC have promised an update but there is no sign of this happening.
Poor analogue signal (Has this been weakened on purpose to force people to switch to Digital?)
No interactive services.
UPC rebrand promised for Oct 21st still has not happened.
Regular breakdown in signal.

I really cannot stand having UPC/NTL but I am unfortunately stuck with it as satellite dishes are not permitted where I live!

marcbrophy

murpho999 wrote: »

UPC rebrand promised for Oct 21st still has not happened.

in case you haven't noticed it's upc.ie now, not chorus or ntl.ie

murpho999

marcbrophy wrote: »

in case you haven't noticed it's upc.ie now, not chorus or ntl.ie

Yes, but when you go to that, it just brings you to the old Chorus/NTL page.
Also, the old Chorus.ie & NTL.ie web addresses still work the same, so nothing has changed.

They still advertise as Chorus/NTL in the media without much mention of UPC.
Vehicles still carry NTL livery.

The rebrand is not complete in anyway, so it's another deadline that UPC/NTL/Chorus/Cablelink/RTE Relays have failed to deliver on:p

belmulletman

Are people still having this problem...
I was away for the week, and it seems to have gotten worse!
it's on all channels now, very very regularly!!!

I know there's the standard suggestion of call UPC... but since it's happening ALL over the place what's the point in a single call out to a single household?

ANYONE from UPC have any suggestions or clear up what's going on i'd be very very grateful...

Many Thanks,
B.

The tax man

I haven't seen it over the last few days. Mainly evening to late night viewing.

rockal

Seems to have cleared in the last couple of days for me as well.

tvbrat

Its bad today, breaking up on all channels
Over the last couple of hours, it gone off completely, including the analogue.
Maybe they are upgrading the aera.

I have tried to get through to them but after I'm transfered to the faults department via the voice menu, the phone rings for about 5 minutes, goes back to the music, and its starts ringing over again.

Alun

rockal wrote: »

Seems to have cleared in the last couple of days for me as well.

The long, 10-20 second breakups appear indeed to have gone, but have been replaced by shorter, more frequent ones. Last night was pretty bad, my wife was watching Cranford on BBC and the last 15 minutes or so was unwatchable due to the sound and vision dropouts.

BTW is there any equivalent on the DVR boxes to the stats page (signal strength, SNR, error rates etc.) you could get on the old Pace boxes by pressing the yellow help button? I can't find anything myself .. maybe it's tucked away in an engineer's menu somewhere?

DingDong

Their's no diag screen or engineering screen on the dvr Alun, which is a bit odd.

I haven't notice any problems of recent with my dvr freezing it or breaking up of picture.

the1andonly1

ours has become more frequent, it's been happening all day today (sky sports and setanta)

The tax man

the1andonly1 wrote: »

ours has become more frequent, it's been happening all day today (sky sports and setanta)

Anyone still having any sort of picture breakup on their digital service is suffering from a local fault. The breakup we all saw and had,that started this thread, has been fixed some days now and was down to a fault at the headend.