Virgin Media Community

[Baldylocks]

Hi

Hopeful that there are some capable Virgin techies who know their kit lurking here, I've had a dismal experience on nearly five hours of calls over the last three days.

Secondary box (tivo not v6) started going wrong about a week ago. No picture or sound from tuners on live tv, on demand or recordings. All menus fine, so no connection problems from box to TV. Sometimes a reboot or two would make it work for a bit.

Box was replaced 18th Feb. Took hours of calls to get activated due to big problems sending hits and activations from Virgin end. Resolved after four hours of mostly holding, late on 19th Feb.

During these calls it was obvious that the Technical Support people had little knowledge of the devices. I was variously told the TiVo needed to be connected to the hub by ethernet or wifi and they were surprised when I said it got internet (for on demand) and tv signal via co-ax. They also assured me the TiVo had wifi!

Morning of 20th Feb new box exhibiting EXACTLY the same symptoms as the old one. After two reboots I get a picture and sound for a few minutes but then it goes again, as before all menus working. On a call this time, I offered to, and read out, detailed info from diagnostics screen for the active tuner.

The outcome was I was told there was an issue in this area affecting the TiVo platform and it would be definitely be working on 23rd. Our V6 is fine however, but I accepted this as possible because they are so different.

After another reboot the picture and sound worked for a few minutes again. I have since checked the service status for the area and see that the "issue affecting the TiVo platform" i was told about is in fact just access to BabeStation on On Demand or similar. So obviously nothing to do with the problem I am experiencing. Another 45 minutes wasted.

After one more call Tech Support booked an engineer visit. Surely this could be resolved remotely by someone who knows what they are doing (it's unlikely to be the box if a new one has identical symptoms to the old one I would think).

Anyone seen this before?

[japitts]

Have you tried swapping your TiVo & V6 around?

If the issues follow the box, it's got an issue somewhere. If the issues stay with the room, you could have a cabling fault.

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@Baldylocks wrote:

The outcome was I was told there was an issue in this area affecting the TiVo platform and it would be definitely be working on 23rd. Our V6 is fine however, but I accepted this as possible because they are so different.

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The TiVo & V6 both run TiVo software, just with different hardware.

[Baldylocks]

I haven't, but when the problem is there the signal strength is showing 100% in Diagnostics.

Also with the same symptoms affecting recordings I'd suggest cabling fault is unlikely too. I know if you are not connected to the VM network you can't play recordings because it can't check account status, but the recording is "playing" (ie, progress bar is there and moving) just not outputting video or sound.

[japitts]

If the incoming TV signal is sufficiently poor so as to cause signal loss errors and/or pixellation, that will affect the resultant recordings.

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@Baldylocks wrote:
I know if you are not connected to the VM network you can't play recordings 

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Not entirely true, but a disconnected box is certainly on borrowed time.

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@Baldylocks wrote:
but the recording is "playing" (ie, progress bar is there and moving) just not outputting video or sound.

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Can you view the V6 menus, TV Guide etc?

It sounds potentially like an HDMI handshake issue.

[Baldylocks]

Yes, as I said in original post, menus etc are perfect, so no HDMI issue.

I also know that of course if the signal is poor there will be pixellation on recordings (but as also stated signal strength is 100%).

This is not a degradation of recordings or live tv, it goes from perfect picture on Recording, Live or On Demand for a few minutes, to black screen and silent on Live TV, (known good) recordings, or OnDemand. Menus and and progress bars continue to display perfectly. 

(And yes, I understand that v6 and TiVo are basically the same software on different hardware. The reason I accepted Tech Support fobbing me off saying that it was a TiVo platform issue (despite the V6 working perfectly throughout) was that their method of obtaining their signal is completely different - V6 requiring Ethernet/Wi-Fi connection and TiVo using Co-Ax)

[japitts]

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@Baldylocks wrote:

their method of obtaining their signal is completely different - V6 requiring Ethernet/Wi-Fi connection and TiVo using Co-Ax)

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All VM boxes get their TV signals using Co-ax. The V6 is no exception.

The difference between TiVo & V6 is how the internet connection is achieved.

I'm a bit lost as to what the issue is here, but short of swapping the boxes around to prove it either way, it needs calling in regardless.

[Baldylocks]

Yes I know it comes into the house via coax, obviously. But TiVo has a modem built in whereas v6 needs an external modem. It's not inconceivable that the TiVo internal modem might use a different subnet or whatever. Anyway, that's not relevant to the problem at hand, it was just an explanation as to why I thought I might be being told something useful by Tech Support instead of being fobbed off.

I really do appreciate you trying to help, but I don't really think you have understood the actual nature of the problem. I have a technical background and a pretty good understanding of the devices, which is why I was hoping that there might be a real technician from virgin on these forums who might be able to really understand the problem and help - the 4 people I have spoken to in Tech Support do not even know that the TiVo does not have WiFi and does not need a LAN connection to the Hub - so have very little confidence in them being able to actually do anything.

[japitts · Accepted solution]

Re-reading the previous posts, there's a couple more things it would be useful to eliminate.

Have you changed the video output? Was your TV connected when you last restarted the TiVo? A video self-test is part of the boot sequence.

If you go from live TV to VOD (thus changing the input source) and back again, does this have any effect?

Forum staff do lurk on here, but the primary intention is of being a community forum.

[Baldylocks]

I've marked your answer as helpful, sorry, meant to do it a few days ago.

I can't say for sure whether it was the fix, but the comment about the video self test on boot got me thinking. I basically disconnected everything, powered it off, reconnected again, but using a different port on TV.

It did play up once more after this, but one more reboot seems to have sorted it.