Tivo upgrade and exterior wiring questions

[rocco1504]

I've been a customer for over 15 years now.

Recently, I think our Tivo box has been playing up, it keeps juddering, cutting out intermittently and the screen pixelates a lot, which is very frustrating and I think it's about to pack up completely. .

When we had the system installed, no exterior wiring was replaced as the previous tenant had, had the NTL world service, as I believe Virgin was back then, so the engineer never renewed the exterior wiring to the property, so the wiring could be over 20 years old.

Recently the exterior wiring has become exposed from under the "Shared" drive way and I think it needs replacing as it may well be being damaged by vehicles.

Also, our Tivo box is the old style and I think it's at the end of its life and we've never been offered an upgrade even though I have changed packages and so on.

I have been paying over £80 pounds a month for a very long time now and find it a bit of a bad service that we've never been offered any upgrades of our hardware.

1. Would I be expected to have to pay for replacing the existing wiring and tivo box.

2 would I be expected to take a new package to get an upgrade to our hardware.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Kind regards

Paul 

[nodrogd · Accepted solution]

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@rocco1504 wrote:

I've been a customer for over 15 years now.

Recently, I think our Tivo box has been playing up, it keeps juddering, cutting out intermittently and the screen pixelates a lot, which is very frustrating and I think it's about to pack up completely. .

When we had the system installed, no exterior wiring was replaced as the previous tenant had, had the NTL world service, as I believe Virgin was back then, so the engineer never renewed the exterior wiring to the property, so the wiring could be over 20 years old.

Recently the exterior wiring has become exposed from under the "Shared" drive way and I think it needs replacing as it may well be being damaged by vehicles.

Also, our Tivo box is the old style and I think it's at the end of its life and we've never been offered an upgrade even though I have changed packages and so on.

I have been paying over £80 pounds a month for a very long time now and find it a bit of a bad service that we've never been offered any upgrades of our hardware.

1. Would I be expected to have to pay for replacing the existing wiring and tivo box.

No. If the fault you have can be traced to an issue with the cable it will be replaced FOC, although digging up driveways is not in Virgins remit & it would likely still remain on top of the driveway.

2 would I be expected to take a new package to get an upgrade to our hardware.

If you haven’t upgraded in a while then you are missing out on not only cheaper prices, but upgraded equipment. So I would pursue a package change. All new packages now come with Virgin 360 as standard, so you would be moving to the Horizon TV platform, not staying with TiVO. I would also point out with V360 (or with TiVO V6 if you decide just to box swap) that taking VM Broadband is mandatory. Despite some services now coming through the Broadband modem rather than the TV box, they are on an internal VM system that will not work with any other ISP.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Kind regards

Paul 

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[japitts]

I hope @nodrogd won't mind me clarifying one point...

It's true to say that all new customer packages come with the 360 platform - but for existing TiVo-based customers, a conversion to 360 is completely voluntary and you should be able to swap to a V6 box (running the same TiVo-software as you're familar with), without problem.

Do some research into 360 for yourself, because you can't "trial" it and revert to TiVo/V6 if you don't like it. You can convert to 360, or swap to V6 - the choice is entirely yours. But the platform is substantially different.

[rocco1504]

Hi, and thank you both for your replies, really appreciate it. 

Is it possible to get the V6 box directly from Virgin ?, as I have read that I can't just pick up a 2nd hand one and use that, and I don't want to get a new contract until I've tried out the new V6 box, and I don't want to have to go through all the hard sell from Virgin sales just to get a new box to try out. 

I don't think the problem I'm having is the TV as its only a few months old, but the TiVo box is probably about 10 years old and as I said the cabling is probably 20 years old. 

Many thanks again 

Paul 

[japitts]

Not only can you get the V6 from Virgin, it's the only way to get them. Virgin operate a rental setup, where the kit you use in your home is supplied by them - any "second-hand" V6 you see are - technically - stolen goods.

Asking for a box-swap as part of a contract renegotiation is usually the most reliable way, but if - for whatever reason - you don't want to do that, then the alternative is asking if & when you're offered a fault swapout. The only issue here is that you're only "entitled" to a like-for-like swap and a V6 change isn't guaranteed.

Ask - and see what they say.

[nodrogd]

Under normal circumstances cables do not deteriorate unless they are damaged. Most of my coax is from my original County Cable install in 1993 & happily achieves my paid for 350Mb speeds & not a pixel out of place on the TV.

[Roger_Gooner]

Pixelation is usually a fault with the TV box or network. Call VM to get a tech round.

[rocco1504]

I spoke with VM yesterday and they advised that they are doing some work in the area, but I told them that this has been getting steadily worse over a few months and we both agreed that it probably wasn't that causing the issue..... The TV is about 6 months old, so I doubt there's any problem there.

I advised them that problem is that the TV has a strip of green that flashes across the whole screen (TV ??, maybe) but also sometimes the pictures just stop for a split second and then resume, so you can actually miss parts of dialogue and sometimes, rather bizarrely, the audio does not correspond with the mouth movement of the actors, so you get a badly dubbed Kung Fu movie effect.

I'm going to research my model of TV just to see if there's any reported issues, just to be sure, but I reckon it's either the Tivo box or the fact that the exterior cable was originally buried under the shared drive and is now becoming exposed in about 3 places and that various vehicles are passing over it on a regular basis so could be causing damage to it.

Anyway, they asked that I monitor the pictures today as they've now finished their work and to report back to them if there's still any problems.

Thanks for your help. 

[newapollo]

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@rocco1504 wrote:

I advised them that problem is that the TV has a strip of green that flashes across the whole screen (TV ??, maybe) but also sometimes the pictures just stop for a split second and then resume, so you can actually miss parts of dialogue and sometimes, rather bizarrely, the audio does not correspond with the mouth movement of the actors, so you get a badly dubbed Kung Fu movie effect.

. 

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Does the strip of green only happen with the TIVo, or does it also occur on normal terrestrial TV?

If it's just happening on the TIVO then I would try a different HDMI cable as faulty HDMI cables (or sockets) can cause green flashes. That may also account for the momentaary stoppages.

Aside from the observation I've just made, a swap out for a V6 is an excellent idea.

[rocco1504]

That sounds like a great place to start.

I'll pick up a new HDMI cable tomorrow and see if that makes any difference, the problem is, I've just checked the purchase date of our TV and its saying that it was January 2020 but I'm almost certain that I bought it this year and not last, because if its the TV, I want it fixed under warranty and I don't want Samsung trying to wriggle out of it.

Problem is it could be any one of about 3 things, but it would be great if I can get virgin to let me have a V6 box to use, because my old Tivo box really is on its last legs.

Thanks for the information though. I'm hoping it will be the solution to at least part of the problem, I'll let you know how it goes. 

Regards Paul