Virgin Media Community

[mattwalsha]

My tivo box constantly buffers when watching catch up particularly through iplayer where it's buffers every few seconds making it totally unwatchable!

Anyone got any ideas how to resolve?

Am getting sick of paying for a service which I can't fully use and have had numerous issues.

Don't particularly want another engineer out, as the last one had no idea what he was talking about and couldn't even open the cabinet without calling his supervisor!

Ps Virgin please do not fob me off with the high demand excuse, as it happens in the middle of the day when everyone else is more than likely at work.

[BenD_H]

Hi Mattwalsha

I am sorry to read that the TiVo is buffering whilst on Catch Up, I can understand that your frustration is the high demand is something that is affecting you. I have included some information regarding this:-

We are planning to undertake some upgrades to support the increased demand for our services in your area. When completed, any buffering on TiVo apps you may be experiencing (particularly at peak times such as evenings and weekends) will be resolved.

Ticket reference: F003669643

Est review date:  17/08/16

I have checked the TiVo and apart from this outage the box is actually running really well.

I hope that this has helped and have a great day.

Ben

[mattwalsha]

Hi Ben,

Thanks for your response.

Are you really saying the issue is down to high demand? If so, why does it still happen in the middle of the day in the week when surely the demand should be low at this time?

Can you please confirm when the upgrade works will be completed?

In the meantime, I take it Virgin will discount the cost of my package as I can't use the services I am paying for and haven't been able to for months. Please confirm how Virgin are going to deal with this.

Thanks
Matt

[G4DDS]

iPlayer is rubbish at that the moment - it's been really bad the past couple of weeks. I watched Extra Gear over the weekend and the 23 minute programme must have buffered more than 20 times!

At one point it just froze for a minute and then a message box appeared stating that an error had occurred and the most probable cause was a loss of internet access and to check my router! I thought this was particularly interesting error message as the TiVo has its own dedicated connection which is nothing to do with my BB internet connection!

This was Sunday morning - is there really high demand around 9:30 AM Sunday mornings?!?!?

[Collette_T]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for your reply

I have had a look into this for you and I can confirm that when I check the box remotely all signal and power levels are working fine right now.  The only issue that we can detect is the high demand issue that has already been escalated and our network engineers are working to alleviate the high demand problems currently present.

I have looked into the high demand fault raised a little further and looking at the times that you're being impacted, it is mainly evenings from around 4-5pm onwards right through to around midnight, but there are times earlier in the afternoon where the high demand is higher than normal.  

High demand does mainly occur during peaks times but the services can be affected to different levels at different times.  It will tend to be worse in the evenings, this doesn't mean that anyone affected by this will be symptom free during the day entirely.

The latest update is that we will hope to have this resolved as soon as possible, this will be reviewed on 17 AUG 2016, if by then things haven't improved, we welcome you to pop back to us and request an update and we'll be happy to help check this further.  Due to the nature of the work required we're unable to guarantee that this will be fixed by this time.  The reference number for this is: F003669643.

In regards to credit for the disruption, the BBC iPlayer is a free App available to all via various devices so we wouldn't credit for this facility if it's disrupted.

I am sorry for the disruption caused during this time.  We will work hard to get this resolved as soon as we can.

Thank you for your patience.

Collette

[G4DDS]

---

Collette_T wrote:

I have looked into the high demand fault raised a little further and looking at the times that you're being impacted, it is mainly evenings from around 4-5pm onwards right through to around midnight, but there are times earlier in the afternoon where the high demand is higher than normal.  

High demand does mainly occur during peaks times but the services can be affected to different levels at different times.  It will tend to be worse in the evenings, this doesn't mean that anyone affected by this will be symptom free during the day entirely.

---

Mine was last Sunday morning at 9:30 AM - is there really high demand at this time?

I still find it quite amusing that it also gave me an an error message that a problem had occurred and the most probable cause was a loss of internet access and to check my router which as we know is completely wrong as the TiVo boxes have their own dedicated BB connection. I suppose it does point to problems at the VM end (server issues / dropping connections?) - perhaps you could add it to the fault report about the error message. I don't ever recall anyone else ever mention getting an error message before.

[Collette_T]

Hi G4DDS,

Thanks for coming by

I would like to check this further for you as well, you're right in that the TiVo® does have it's own dedicated modem.  It can be connected to the same network as the Broadband service is. Depending on the cause of the error it sounds like it may be an network issue.

I will check this out and see if this is the case.  Firstly, can you please tell me if this affects just the one TiVo®?  

In regards to checking the high demand, I can only check up to 3 days prior, I can't see any further than that so I won't be able to check the Sunday you're referring to.  

If you can let me know if it just the one TiVo® and if it affects other apps as well, that would be great.

Collette

[G4DDS]

Hi Collette,

Happens on both TiVo's. I'm pretty sure it is only BBC iPlayer that is affected (but can't be 100% certain) and it has only been the past two or three weeks where the problem has been noticed.

Thanks

[Evelyn60]

I am experiencing similar issues, both iplayer and Netflix, as you say, basically unwatchable. 

[Collette_T]

Hi G4DDS,

Thanks for your reply

I have been carrying out further checks, so far there isn't any signal/power level issue present, nor is there any high demand affecting the network your TiVo® is connected to.  

These issues we can rule out so far.

If you wouldn't mind checking either YouTube or Netflix to see if they give similar symptoms as a test that would be awesome.

If you can keep me posted, I can check further.

Collette