Does/Did Your ntl Digital STB Lock Up?

[daxx]

Pace 2000 one lock up in 3+ years (pre-upgrade)
Samsung no lock ups to date since reaplcement

[Seti]

yep, regularly. Tends to put things like the history channel on BBC 1 as well. Very annoying if your an avid fan of Eastenders like me! (Sorry to those who hate soaps ) My mothers resets itself all the time and then stays off untill the following day. Next door to myself they had a resetting box and blamed it on a ghost!


My box also needs resetting most days in order to view the guide. I am not sure which one it is , I know its new though as I have had it for a year.

When i first joined NTL my box broke twice. They replaced them. I moved and the box i brought with me decided it didn't like my new premises so NTL had to change that too along with the remote! They were stuck onthe boot screen for ages.

Now (touch wood) I haven't got any problems apart from the flick of channels and having to reboot it every two days.

SeTi^

[zoombini]

Might be better to make that poll mention that it's for a digital box, the analogue ones never locked up AFAIKR.

I had both, the digital STB was always locking up, esp if we used the games.

Pace Di4000-N return power 47dBmv

Regularly crashes, red button & interactive sometimes work and quite often causes freezing or crashes. Box also crashes from time to time for no apparent reason, this used to ba a daily occurence but not so often now.

I'm rather puzzled by CA IPPV status: UKNOWN does this indicate a problem.
Our first box was a Samsung but it refused to show half of the channels.

My PACE 1000 never ever locked up but NTL changed it as my broadband kept failing. Was nothing to do with the STB in the end. My PACE 4000 locked up all the time and lost channels too.

I now have a Sammy and that regularly "hangs", i change channel and the box just sits there doing nothing and a minute or so later it decides to change channel. Using the red button does cause it to lock up too. Also on occasions channels are black but on return to the same channel the picture and sound are present.

My final whinge with the Sammy is that when i change channel the new channel appears and the picture freezes and jerks for the forst 2-3 seconds and make a horrible noise some of the time.

Did i say final whinge? ok this is the last one. As i use widescreen when i turn the STB on it doesnt auto change my AV input on the TV, i have to change channel of the STB several times to make this happen.

[iadom]

Pace 2000 also running 750K BB rarely locks up.

Pace 1000 does lock up, mainly when using interactive. ( has locked up a lot recently but that is not down to the box )

[Tod]

Is it pretty conclusive then that the Samsung box has no problems?

[Matth]

Pace 1000 - Interactive is russian roulette - lockups, "Unexpected errors", the lot - Red button ... Red Alert, though it seems more of the recent problems may be interactive service related, rather than the box itself - but like a GPF in Windows, once you've had one foulup, just reboot the thing as soon as it's convenient - I think it has a memory leak!

[dilli-theclaw]

So - what happens if I call ntl and tell them my box keeps crashing? Do they send an engineer round? Do I get a new box? And how do I prove it crashes as it does it intermittently?

[Tod]

How do I tell which box I have? I remember there being a guide somewhere?

[iadom]

Press page up+page down+ blue.

The third page will tell you your hardware type.

When watching TV: very rarely.
When accessing 'interactive': Guaranteed. Every time.

[Stuart]

Had a fair bit of trouble with my first Pace 1000 (had 3 over the years and the first one never worked reliably). The other two were fine (although no 2 did throw a wobbly hence me getting no.3). All of the Paces were a bit flaky when accessing interactive.

The Samsung I have now is fast, and seems reliable on Interactive as well. The only thing that does sometimes cause the Sammy to crash is if I transfer a lot of data to/from my PC when attached to work's Virtual Private Network..

[dhlennon]

Pace 2000, stable as anything unless using EPG or any interactive when it's as stable as Rik Waller on a 2 legged stool

[scrotnig]

Time for my regular evangelising about ntl's TV service I'm afraid.

I have three boxes. Currently one Samsung and two Pace 1000's.

The Samsung is marginally faster than the PACEs, but not much. The Paces speeded up DRAMATICALLY when I put new Duracell batteries in the remotes last month, an interesting point to note.

Although I currently have a SACM, I used to run 1mb broadband via one of the PACEs and I couldn't make it crash even when using interactive at the same time.

I have had the odd crash but it is very occasionally and all three boxes normally perform excellently. I only ever get a 'no schedule data' error for a few seconds after booting the box up from scratch, other than that it's always there and useable.

I do not deny there are problems with some Pace boxes, and for some people with the TV service in general, however, my experience is more common than you might think.

I love the DTV service and would never be without it, it's as simple as that. My only gripe is that ntl are FAR too slow launching new channels compared with other platforms, though it was nice to see ITV3 launch on time.