NTL digital dead

Round Cable

What sort of a service is this, digital is completely dead, while analogue is fine, anyone else having problems?

JohnC.

I haven't checked every channel, but a random selection seem to be working for me.

weehamster

Well Analogue signals can take far more beating than digital which depends on a clean signal to work. Even though digital TV can give a higher quality picture, the biggest problem with a Digital signal is that you either get it or you don't. There is no in-between.

The Dublin Cable network is a very poor network made up of a patchwork of new and old cable (many have been there since cable started in Dublin) and many different types of quality of cable and boxes. Many have gone into such a bad state.

The problem is that to properly replace the entire cable network to a uniform high standard will cost a fortune. NTL know this and is why they are pulling out.

The only solution I can see is to break up Dublin into small cable networks where it would be far more affordable to replace the network and easier to maintain it.

Boomer23

have you thought of doing the on-screen instructions???

unplug the box from the power, leave for 2 mins and then plug back in

should be grand after that

The tax man

Are you just getting a blank screen??
Press the help key and post the figures it shows at 4 and 5.

Round Cable

Well I've plugged it out twice and then reset it, it finally came back, any idea what caused this?, picture freezing is becoming more common recently.

Boomer23

press help and number 5, thats the snr, write it down and call ntl

Dub13

Get a Dish....

Mossy Monk

Dub13 wrote:

Get a Dish....

very true that Sky doesnt go down

i only ever noticed it once and that was only a selection of channels but cable viewers were affected too

not everyone wants/can have a dish

Round Cable

Mossy Monk wrote:

not everyone wants/can have a dish

True, I don't really want a dish they are very ugly neither do my neighbours. Also it would be impossible. I've included a picture of my house (basic as hell), I though about one in the back garden/shed but there are houses down the road in the way.

weehamster

The Chimney or under the eves?
Granted that they are not the most pleasing thing to the eye, they not that bad. Its usually a bad or lazy install that make it ugly. There are many ways to make it more appealable like spraying the dish to match the wall or more simply making a extra effort to place the dish correctly etc...

The ones I REALLY hate is the houses that have the dish one the front wall of the house, even though they dont have permission to do so.

Round Cable

It can't go on the chimney anyway it's a shared one with neighbours, the angle is a bit crap for the direction of the dish. I saw a house with a similar angle to my own and the dish was at the back of the house, you could bearly notice it, however I don't think the angle to the satellite was quite as bad.

JohnC.

I'm not referring specifically to anyone here, but I don't understand why some people have a big problem with a Sky dish but have no problem with the countryside being littered with worse (IMO) MMDS dishs. At least with Sky dishs, they are often less obvious but with MMDS, they are stuck up a pole (sometimes a very long pole) on the chimney and very visible.

chorus techy

Round Cable wrote:

Well I've plugged it out twice and then reset it, it finally came back, any idea what caused this?, picture freezing is becoming more common recently.

Could be just the box having to cool down or be plugged out long enough to "forget" the settings - the ntl boxes have to work themselves into the ground as much of the cabling into houses from the street bunkers are so old, that the frequencies "bend" and "curve" so that by the time it gets to your box, it could be a few megahertz off what the box thinks it is - this is often why boxes "freeze up" when going past certain channels or why it sometimes takes so long to change between channels.

Boomer23

frequencies bend and curve??? and you call yourself a techie????

the only way for a frequency to do either of these things is with a beambender. plus, as its cable, explain to me how signal can "curve" in a closed medium????

lensman

Boomer23 wrote:

frequencies bend and curve??? and you call yourself a techie????

the only way for a frequency to do either of these things is with a beambender. plus, as its cable, explain to me how signal can "curve" in a closed medium????

walking zero's !! in the digital service...

Boomer23

what lensman???

Marcopolo85

chorus techy wrote:

Could be just the box having to cool down or be plugged out long enough to "forget" the settings - the ntl boxes have to work themselves into the ground as much of the cabling into houses from the street bunkers are so old, that the frequencies "bend" and "curve" so that by the time it gets to your box, it could be a few megahertz off what the box thinks it is - this is often why boxes "freeze up" when going past certain channels or why it sometimes takes so long to change between channels.

Erm........you're quite wrong actually. The boxes tune to what's called a 'home' multiplex to obtain the information relavant to the platform on which they're operating. This is critical to whether they work or not. If they don't see that information you will get a 'no signal' error and the box will roll over.
It cannot be 'out' by anything - full stop! This is the digital domain and there is no margin for error, especially of the magnitude you describe. :eek:

The tax man

Now you lot down the back,pay attention to this.

Download from this link (4mb)

chorus techy

Marcopolo85 wrote:

Erm........you're quite wrong actually. The boxes tune to what's called a 'home' multiplex to obtain the information relavant to the platform on which they're operating. This is critical to whether they work or not. If they don't see that information you will get a 'no signal' error and the box will roll over.
It cannot be 'out' by anything - full stop! This is the digital domain and there is no margin for error, especially of the magnitude you describe. :eek:

Ever heard of central frequency offset?
This is usually a reading on a box which is an estimation of how far off the frequency being received is from what it should be.

Marcopolo85

chorus techy wrote:

Ever heard of central frequency offset?
This is usually a reading on a box which is an estimation of how far off the frequency being received is from what it should be.

How best can this be explained? The set-top box is told to download it's information from a home multiplex frequency. If it doesn't see that it will not work - this is the way it is. Now, unless there are specific circumstances this will not vary. This is where it gets NIT tables, etc.

The central frequency offset you refer to may be related to MMDS, where, in certain areas, a downconverter's local oscillator may (because it's designed to due to local conditions) produce an offset of maybe + or - 8 Megs. Then the box will have to be retuned manually to the home mux. This, however, is an inbuilt design factor, NOT something that will occur randomly as you describe.

You have quoted items such as bunkers - I presume you mean manholes containg subscriber tap units? Again, these will be pre-designed to deliver a set amount of signal to each home. Factors such as cable length, highest frequency, etc determine their value. If a fault develops it will usually cause the signal to weaken, or even a mis-match may occur.

I cannot understand how a fault can cause a frequency to shift (or curve as you so eloquently describe it). Maybe you could elaborate on this?

Guy:Incognito

I've got nothing for the last 20 minutes or so. Ive an on-screen message saying "your set top box cannot find any service, switch off your stb from tthe mains, check blah blah blah. error 1014."

Ive reset it twice but no joy. Im in tallaght, anyone else having problems? Analogue is fine and no cables have been touched.

Marcopolo85

The tax man wrote:

Now you lot down the back,pay attention to this.

Download from this link (4mb)

Very good Taxman!

You're spot on. But what IS NOT mentioned there (and which is also extremely critical) is MER (Modulation Error Ration). The lower the MER, the worse things like pixellation, freezing, etc become. This can be badly affected by low signal levels. The technical description of it is:

Modulation Error Ratio (MER) is a measure of the constellation cluster variance due to any impairment or transmitter imperfections measured relative to the ideal constellation point locations.

Instead of transmitter imperfection substitute cable fault and you have your answer.

Mountjoy Mugger

Stekelly wrote:

I've got nothing for the last 20 minutes or so. Ive an on-screen message saying "your set top box cannot find any service, switch off your stb from tthe mains, check blah blah blah. error 1014."

Ive reset it twice but no joy. Im in tallaght, anyone else having problems? Analogue is fine and no cables have been touched.

In Dublin 1. Same problem.

belmulletman

It's saying it's trying to upgrade my STB, but it's not doing anything....

it keeps ending up with a message saying...

"failed to upgrade... bla bla bla...
plug box out of mains check all connections bla bla bla"!!!

ERR20 if that makes any sense!!!!



LIKE 3 times now!!!!! WTF!!!!

Driving me nuts!!!

now all i've got is the NTL stand-by screen!!!

HELP!!!

oh, i'm in Dublin 8!!!!

lensman

Boomer23 wrote:

what lensman???

it's late but in a nutshell it's when 1bit of a data stream changes
from 1 to 0, walking 1's are the reverse, happens with poorly designed
digital stuff both hardware and software, causes pc's to crash and NTL stb's
to freeze,
walking 0's eh..a new buzz word

lensman

belmulletman wrote:

It's saying it's trying to upgrade my STB, but it's not doing anything....

it keeps ending up with a message saying...

"failed to upgrade... bla bla bla...
plug box out of mains check all connections bla bla bla"!!!

ERR20 if that makes any sense!!!!



LIKE 3 times now!!!!! WTF!!!!

Driving me nuts!!!

now all i've got is the NTL stand-by screen!!!

HELP!!!

oh, i'm in Dublin 8!!!!

Dublin 7,...same :mad: here but error 1014

MartMax

NTL must be doing sthing there, same problem now in IFSC... cable modem is working normal... thank god!

belmulletman

so what do we do now,

just leave the box's plugged out until the morning...

oh and can i ask... is everyone here getting the same upgrade problem and all they see now is the NTL stand-by screen??


Thanks,

B-man

lensman

belmulletman wrote:

so what do we do now,

just leave the box's plugged out until the morning...

oh and can i ask... is everyone here getting the same upgrade problem and all they see now is the NTL stand-by screen??


Thanks,

B-man

I blame the yanks,.. just because NTL don't carry Fox News

John R

belmulletman wrote:

so what do we do now,

just leave the box's plugged out until the morning...

oh and can i ask... is everyone here getting the same upgrade problem and all they see now is the NTL stand-by screen??


Thanks,

B-man

It is obviously not a problem with the reciever boxes as there are outages all over (South County also out BTW) so either it is a main fault on their end or a scheduled maintenance, either way the only option is to wait.

The "we are currently upgrading your box..." screen is just a default graphic generated by the box when it is booting/upgrading/tuning/not recieving a signal/etc. it does not usually mean that there is an upgrade taking place.

Guy:Incognito

I had service back by around 4, seemsfine now.

The tax man

Marcopolo85 wrote:

Very good Taxman!

You're spot on. But what IS NOT mentioned there (and which is also extremely critical) is MER (Modulation Error Ration). The lower the MER, the worse things like pixellation, freezing, etc become. This can be badly affected by low signal levels. The technical description of it is:

Modulation Error Ratio (MER) is a measure of the constellation cluster variance due to any impairment or transmitter imperfections measured relative to the ideal constellation point locations.

Instead of transmitter imperfection substitute cable fault and you have your answer.

Yeah he only touched on it for a second but I'd say they cover it on one of the other downloads.I think he mentioned 23 as the cut off point for MER's.
You try and watch dtv here with that sort of mer reading.Mid 30's required here.Anything in the 20's is bad news and the cluster is spread all over the place.

My mates stb went tits up last night too. Stuck on the NIT stage of boot up.
That was in Blanch.
Two stb's in my house no probs on either

The Recliner

I am having problems with missing channels since the weekend

Anyone else missing channels from BBC1 to Channel 4 on NTL Digital also missing a couple of the Sky Sports channels.

I unplug the box every night so it shouldn't be an update problem

Any ideas?

Round Cable

BBC1-Channel4 are coming in fine here.

The tax man

The Recliner wrote:

I am having problems with missing channels since the weekend

Anyone else missing channels from BBC1 to Channel 4 on NTL Digital also missing a couple of the Sky Sports channels.

I unplug the box every night so it shouldn't be an update problem

Any ideas?

Put the stb on say BBC1 then press "help" on the remote.
You'll see a load of numbers on the right hand side of the screen.
The figures at no.4 and no.5 what are they reading?

The Recliner

The tax man wrote:

Put the stb on say BBC1 then press "help" on the remote.
You'll see a load of numbers on the right hand side of the screen.
The figures at no.4 and no.5 what are they reading?

Only replying now as don't have the net at home

The following is what I got when I did as you said

4) O.OE+O-1.3 E-7

5) 17.9

Hope this means something to someone

The box seems to boot up fine, no error messages and no flashing lights, it is one of the small silver ones and I am in Dublin 1/Dublin 7 if that makes any difference.

The tax man

The Recliner wrote:

Only replying now as don't have the net at home

The following is what I got when I did as you said

4) O.OE+O-1.3 E-7

5) 17.9

Hope this means something to someone

.

Oh dear,that ain't good. Check the connections are all tight but I'd say(if you haven't already) ring NTL to get it looked at. Those readings basically mean you've a crap signal on that mux. Errors and that 17.9 should be in the 30's.

The Recliner

Thanks for that

Will ring them this afternoon, had been hoping I wouldn't have too.

Connections should be fine, the box hasn't moved or been touched since the day it was installed, will check them though.

I remember the guy who installed it saying that there was buckets of signal coming through when he checked, something must have gone tits up since.

Will let you know how I get on, if I ever get through to them

The Recliner

Got around to ringing NTL eventually, fair play I got straight through to someone

I was advised to remove the card from the decoder, clean it and put it back in and restart the machine.

Despite my initial scepticism this actually fixed the problem.

However the guy on the phone told me that I shouldn't be plugging the box out every night that I should be leaving it on stand by.

I am just curious, what is wrong with plugging it out every night, I thought rebotting it would be good for it?

The tax man

The Recliner wrote:

I was advised to remove the card from the decoder, clean it and put it back in and restart the machine.

Despite my initial scepticism this actually fixed the problem.

However the guy on the phone told me that I shouldn't be plugging the box out every night that I should be leaving it on stand by.

I am just curious, what is wrong with plugging it out every night, I thought rebotting it would be good for it?

Hmmm...Its true sometimes the box and card can't talk to each other but that shouldn't really give you those readings you got.
Has it been out of action since your last post??
Is this the first time you rebooted since your last post??
If you want to unplug the box at night,unplug it.It won't miss anything.When it's plugged back in it'll get any updates etc that may have been sent out over night.

The Recliner

The tax man wrote:

Hmmm...Its true sometimes the box and card can't talk to each other but that shouldn't really give you those readings you got.
Has it been out of action since your last post??
Is this the first time you rebooted since your last post??
If you want to unplug the box at night,unplug it.It won't miss anything.When it's plugged back in it'll get any updates etc that may have been sent out over night.

It has been out of action since the last post, all other channels were fine bar the ones mentioned

I have been unplugging it every night as usual since the last post and it has booted up fine which is why I find it odd that removing the card did the trick, surely all the channels would have been affected.

I didn't think unplugging it would have an adverse effect but he seemed adamant that it should always be left on standby.

Will do the help thing you told me to do previously over the weekend and see if the readings have changed and let you know on Monday, no net access in the apartment yet.

The Recliner

The Recliner wrote:

4) O.OE+O-1.3 E-7

5) 17.9

Checked the readings in help last night

4 says the same (I think, can't remember the exact message)

5 is back up to 34

Cleannig the card seems to have made a difference, don't know how, it looked fine to me

The tax man

Yeah strange one that. Hopfully it'll stay that way.

Round Cable

Well digital is dead again, with the picture freezing up and a first; analouge is completely screwed up with heavy interferance and jumping picture. There was a power cut earlier would this have had an effect on it? Normally digital can go but analouge would be grand, crap like this has me ever closer reaching for the phonebook to get Sky.