NTL - Screen flashes blank 3 times

Trotter

Has anyone else spotted this problem? Every so often the screen goes blank and comes back to normal 3 times in about 6 seconds. When this happens, the 3rd light on the NTL digibox (the furthest to the right) flashes on. It'd drive ya mad :eek:

JohnC.

It's a way of life for some of us. It's always happening. Sometimes it can be okay for a while, even a few weeks. But then it starts again. I'd actually be pretty happy with NTL if it wasn't for this persistant problem driving me nuts.

Every time we phone about it they give their stock reply about resetting the box. Their constant repitition of this useless remedy is almost as bad as the problem itself. Then they send out an engineer, who inevitably find nothing wrong. And Sky News has dissappeared yet again as I type this.

chorus techy

This sounds more like a dodgy box, if the third light flashes on / off. I presume you have the little silver Pace box - if that light flickers at any time, it sounds like the box is thinking it is receiving commands its not, therefore somethings failing. Ring ntl up and demand that they provide you with a replacement ntl STB. If they do not, then just cancel.

Aquos76

Well if it sounds like a dodgy box then we all must have dodgy boxes. We should all ring them up looking for replacement boxes... Ah hang on then they might give us those small new ones which ok do have rf outputs, but are constantly giving trouble.

chorus techy

It's probably software problem so. I'd hang on and wait for this sale to take place before trying to seriously pursue a fix for the problem. One of the first things that will occur once the sale takes place, is the new owners will build / update all boxes to new code and software, which fleets the new companies name and corporate colours / logos / schemes etc. Hopefully, this will also fix many of the errors. NTL Ireland uses a lot of the (already dodgy) code from the UK, and then fiddles with it (very badly) to remove the UK stuff such as interactive, UK branding etc. with the result that the coding is terrible because they pull out vital parts. Its just one big mess.

JohnC.

We have just had an NTL engineer call and he has told us what is happening. It is indeed a problem at, I think he called it the "head end," meaning where everyone gets their NTL digital from.

There are a few boxes they are working on, some of them in the regional areas. He said they were working util about 4 or 5 this morning in Waterford. But the main problem is some vital piece of equipment where the whole countries NTL digital originates. He said it is some highly technical piece of equipment which the Irish engineers can't do anything with (at this point he muttered something about them being incompetant ). They are getting people from the UK over to do something with that. When asked when we could expect normal service, he just laughed. Our guess is as good as his.

He said the call centre have been informed of this and told not to send out engineers such as himself for the flickering problem because there is nothing at all they can do. Of course the call centre doesn't seem to have read this and they continue to waste everyones time by not telling customers this when they phone and by sending engineers out on dozens of calls where nothing can be done. This particular guy said he is just back after being off for 2 days and his machine had over 30 jobs for him, mostly these pointless ones.

chorus techy

I think ntl receive some of their services from the Uk through a fibre optic cable branching under the Irish sea, so I'd imagine this is what the engineer is talking about. But it's not just that at fault - the software on the boxes is s***e - the silver boxes seem to be the worst for this blanking out problem, the older black Pace Di4000/4001/4010 models tend to show either picture pixelation or just freezing where the silver ones blank out. Hopefully, the new owners of ntl will upgrade the system to make it a little better.