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boragthung · 23-04-2012, 13:27

I have had a few problems with my V+ box over the last 18 month - 2 years, since I think that nationwide server/power breakdown that happened. I had an engineer out today and after replacing something inside the feedbox on the wall (can't remember what he called it) which was old and could cause signal leakage his tests said the signal levels were fine and DTV medic passed as well.

I had held off calling in faults for so long because of the amount of recordings I still need to watch and so was worried about a box swap losing them all.

The instigator to getting round to complaining was on Friday I noticed something that wasn't there before - the external cable box door was hanging off and when I investigated I could see a splitter attached externally and a cable feeding off this to my next door neighbour, with the thinner phone wire twisted on and also going next door.

I queried this with my neighbour when they were in later and apparently they had the installation over 3 weeks ago and they were told at the time that the engineers would return within the week to do the job properly as they didn't have the right equipment with them at that time. My neighbour had forgotten about it and they had not returned. I was pretty furious about this situation and the outright cheek of it, connecting off my line. It looked like some kind of amateurish pirate tap or something, not what I would expect from a 'professional install' !!

The Faults Engineer who visited me today has made a note to get this sorted out. What is extra annoying is the one line coming into me is split internally to feed the V+ and modem. With this botch job currently existing my one line is now feeding 4 items instead. I was told when I had my V+ swapped originally from my old standard box that in order for me to have an extra box they would have to pull in another feed from the street as there wouldn't be enough power to further split it. So how they can do this is beyond me.

Now for some questions if anyone knows the answers to or are getting the same:

In the technical settings menu where all the power levels,etc are listed there is the QOS value. In the past on my box it used to say something like bia.com or something like that. Nowadays this is just a jumble of letters, numbers, commas, etc - at the moment it looks like it should say ntlworld but jumbled up with wrong letters. What should this be and does it have any bearing on box performance (The engineer didn't know - but the box tests were all positive)?

Others issues I have had in the last couple of years include poor picture quality on some channels looking to me like poor encoding/decoding of the mpeg stream. This displays as the picture blocking into lower res and seems to 'pulse' between smaller higher resolution blocks and larger res blocks as if your eyes are blurring as you look at the picture. Originally this was happening on the SciFi HD channel and was absolutey horrendous. This channel seemed to get sorted some time last year I think. Now the same picture problem has been happening instead to 5* and 5 USA. After todays visit these 5 channels are still rubbish.

My recent web research seems to be suggesting that this is a Channel 5 lack of bandwith problem causing a low quality feed with lots of mpeg artifacts. The picture is almost too hard to watch it is that bad sometimes. This re-enforces my original idea of an encoding problem when I was getting it with SciFi. Living and ITV2 are channels that have suffered this type of problem for me as well in the past.

Does everyone else have this picture problem with 5 stuff? I can only assume this is the case and it is a problem not being caused by the V+ box itself. How can Five get away with such poor quality and for so long?

Another of the issues I get is a massive picture break up that seems to happen only around 21.30. (I am hoping this issue could have been fixed after todays visit). I don't fully know how to reproduce it but it doesn't seem to happen every night.

I am usually recording something between 20.00 and 22.00 most nights and quite often using two tuners simultaneously. The programmes I do record are pretty much always on the hour (8-9, 9-10) rather than half hour so the problem is not being caused by a new recording starting at 21.30. Sometimes I can be watching Live TV at this time, sometimes a previous recording, sometimes a current recording. I might even have the box in standby if I am otherwise occupied and watch the recorded programmes next day. When I get this issue it happens on live TV and recordings. I could be watching the previous nights 9-10 recording and see the break up half way through.

Another (or the same) issue I have is sometimes when watching a recording that seems to have gone alright I can get half way through and then I get a message 'thanks for watching this' and cannot see the rest. I think this issue is caused by the drop out that happens around 21.30 and maybe being so bad it corrupts the file beyond that point. Anyone else get this or have an idea what causes it?

23-04-2012, 13:27	#1
boragthung Inactive Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 47	QOS Value and other problems I have had a few problems with my V+ box over the last 18 month - 2 years, since I think that nationwide server/power breakdown that happened. I had an engineer out today and after replacing something inside the feedbox on the wall (can't remember what he called it) which was old and could cause signal leakage his tests said the signal levels were fine and DTV medic passed as well. I had held off calling in faults for so long because of the amount of recordings I still need to watch and so was worried about a box swap losing them all. The instigator to getting round to complaining was on Friday I noticed something that wasn't there before - the external cable box door was hanging off and when I investigated I could see a splitter attached externally and a cable feeding off this to my next door neighbour, with the thinner phone wire twisted on and also going next door. I queried this with my neighbour when they were in later and apparently they had the installation over 3 weeks ago and they were told at the time that the engineers would return within the week to do the job properly as they didn't have the right equipment with them at that time. My neighbour had forgotten about it and they had not returned. I was pretty furious about this situation and the outright cheek of it, connecting off my line. It looked like some kind of amateurish pirate tap or something, not what I would expect from a 'professional install' !! The Faults Engineer who visited me today has made a note to get this sorted out. What is extra annoying is the one line coming into me is split internally to feed the V+ and modem. With this botch job currently existing my one line is now feeding 4 items instead. I was told when I had my V+ swapped originally from my old standard box that in order for me to have an extra box they would have to pull in another feed from the street as there wouldn't be enough power to further split it. So how they can do this is beyond me. Now for some questions if anyone knows the answers to or are getting the same: In the technical settings menu where all the power levels,etc are listed there is the QOS value. In the past on my box it used to say something like bia.com or something like that. Nowadays this is just a jumble of letters, numbers, commas, etc - at the moment it looks like it should say ntlworld but jumbled up with wrong letters. What should this be and does it have any bearing on box performance (The engineer didn't know - but the box tests were all positive)? Others issues I have had in the last couple of years include poor picture quality on some channels looking to me like poor encoding/decoding of the mpeg stream. This displays as the picture blocking into lower res and seems to 'pulse' between smaller higher resolution blocks and larger res blocks as if your eyes are blurring as you look at the picture. Originally this was happening on the SciFi HD channel and was absolutey horrendous. This channel seemed to get sorted some time last year I think. Now the same picture problem has been happening instead to 5* and 5 USA. After todays visit these 5 channels are still rubbish. My recent web research seems to be suggesting that this is a Channel 5 lack of bandwith problem causing a low quality feed with lots of mpeg artifacts. The picture is almost too hard to watch it is that bad sometimes. This re-enforces my original idea of an encoding problem when I was getting it with SciFi. Living and ITV2 are channels that have suffered this type of problem for me as well in the past. Does everyone else have this picture problem with 5 stuff? I can only assume this is the case and it is a problem not being caused by the V+ box itself. How can Five get away with such poor quality and for so long? Another of the issues I get is a massive picture break up that seems to happen only around 21.30. (I am hoping this issue could have been fixed after todays visit). I don't fully know how to reproduce it but it doesn't seem to happen every night. I am usually recording something between 20.00 and 22.00 most nights and quite often using two tuners simultaneously. The programmes I do record are pretty much always on the hour (8-9, 9-10) rather than half hour so the problem is not being caused by a new recording starting at 21.30. Sometimes I can be watching Live TV at this time, sometimes a previous recording, sometimes a current recording. I might even have the box in standby if I am otherwise occupied and watch the recorded programmes next day. When I get this issue it happens on live TV and recordings. I could be watching the previous nights 9-10 recording and see the break up half way through. Another (or the same) issue I have is sometimes when watching a recording that seems to have gone alright I can get half way through and then I get a message 'thanks for watching this' and cannot see the rest. I think this issue is caused by the drop out that happens around 21.30 and maybe being so bad it corrupts the file beyond that point. Anyone else get this or have an idea what causes it?