Problems! P-A-T ??

szmajh · 17-10-2005, 09:59

hello

Like a month ago i purchased pack of services - Broadband, Cable TV and phone - form NTL. It was really OK, although sometimes TV freezed but rarely (mostly on live footage). I could live with that though.

Yesterday I moved the top-box from one room to the other, i had to disconnect cables for a short while. I moved tv, cables and top-box and connected everything once again. Since then i have some weird messages displayed on the box - TUNE or PAT. I finally managed to switched on the box and quality of the picture was terrible, freezing, pixels and all that. I switched it off again and went to bed. When I woke up in the morning I noticed that "PAT" was onagain, altough box was all night on stand-by mode...

what's up with this PAT thing ??? What's that ??? Thanks for leting me know what's the problem that i am having. Martin

monkey2468 · 17-10-2005, 10:34

Sounds like the screw-in coax cable isn't screwed in properly, or there is a kink in the cable.. Try unscrewing it and screwing it back in.

PAT = Programme Allocation Table. (ie can't find it)

szmajh · 17-10-2005, 10:46

yes i think you are right. There must be a problem with my coax cable. I called ntl and they are sending a engeener guy on thursday. thanks for a reply!!!

pvdb · 30-10-2005, 18:01

monkey2468 wrote in Re: Problems! P-A-T ??
> Sounds like the screw-in coax cable isn't screwed in properly,
> or there is a kink in the cable..
> Try unscrewing it and screwing it back in.
> PAT = Programme Allocation Table. (ie can't find it)

Are there any other reasons you'd get the "PAT" message? I tried unscrewing the coax cable, and screwing it back in, but to no avail.

I even tried connecting the PACE box to the coax my cable modem is connected to (FYI: the cable modem operates properly, so I assume this coax is fine) but I still get the "PAT" message when rebooting the PACE box.

Is there anything else I can check before getting the NTL engineers in?

Many thx in advance!

quadplay · 30-10-2005, 18:08

It either means a cabling fault, a STB fault, or a fault at the headend. If the modem works on the same cable, that means the cable's OK, and if it's not resolved overnight following a reboot, that means it's the STB - which means an engineer visit.

pvdb · 30-10-2005, 18:26

jimbo wrote:
> If the modem works on the same cable, that means the cable's OK,
> and if it's not resolved overnight following a reboot, that means it's
> the STB - which means an engineer visit.

Yes, the modem works on the same cable - I wouldn't be able to peruse this forum otherwise ;-) - so it indeed looks like a STB problem.

FYI: on reboot, the PACE box (4001 model) goes through the following sequence of messages:

PACE
-> TUNE
-> NLT (NIT?)
-> PAT

Is the 3rd message NLT (NIT?) any indication of what might be wrong with the STB?

Many thanks.

spiderplant · 30-10-2005, 20:21

It's saying "NIT" (Network Information Table), and doesn't really help identify the problem.

It could actually be a cable fault. The broadband uses a narrow range of frequencies, whereas the TV uses far more. If some of the TV frequencies were at the wrong signal level on the cable this could cause the box to stick on PAT. Also it might just be that your CM has a particularly good tuner.

Given that the fault started when you disturbed the cables, I think a signal level problem is quite likely. Whatever, you are going to have to ring Faults to get it fixed.