Picture Pixelation

[Bob_Jankers]

Hi.

Our TV picture breaks up on a daily basis and appears pixilated.  Sometimes it briefly displays "Channel Failed" before resuming.  It happens on any TV channel at any time, day or night.  Not sure if this is normal as we've only recently joined VM. We use the 360 box with 100Mb/s broadband.

I don't think it's related to signal strength as switching to a standard aerial through my TV works without any problems.

Do we need to book an engineer already?

Thanks

[japitts]

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@Paulina_Z wrote:

Have you tried to go into your Settings menu to change your picture resolution to 'Automatic' to see if this helps with your pixiation issue?

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In post-33 above, the OP has confirmed "Not noticed any of this random distortion or pixelation with any of the streaming services such as iPlayer or ITV hub"

[Bob_Jankers]

Hi @japitts.

Thanks for all your replies.  Watching the England game tonight on ITV1, there were a few brief instances of pixelation in the pre-match build-up but it's been fine since then.  Like I mentioned previously, the local BBC1 (SD) channel and BBC red button channel (also SD) breaks-up as far as I remember, but we rarely watch those channels.

The example videos were from BBC2 (HD), and BBC1 (HD) which was late-night & broadcasting BBC Three.

The first engineer visit checked all our cabling to our 360 box and checked signal strength etc. No problem found.

Second engineer call out, again checked cabling, signal strength, gave us a new HDMI, checked the outside junction box, and checked the Virgin box in the road.  He claimed to have found a fault in the box in the road and changed some connectors in it.  

However, this has unfortunately had no effect on this annoyingly intermittent problem.

As @roy247 said, maybe our last option is to change our 360 box to see if that's the cause of these issues?  Is our 360 box likely to be a "refurb" that someone else may have been using that expressed this very same problem? I naively though new customers received new equipment with their install?

Thanks

[japitts]

IMHO, the new HDMI cable is unlikely to have made any difference - you've already said that streaming & VoD is unaffected, that's also carried over the HDMI. It doesn't hurt to have changed it, mind.

You've not said whether you were watching the football in SD (113) or HD (103) but I'll presume 103-HD. It would still be useful to have confirmation (either way) of the points I raised about the ITV & C4 combinations - this may help ID whether you do have an issue with a particular broadcast frequency or not.

In the meantime, I have informally mentioned this thread "behind the scenes" to get this looked over again. There's evidently something wrong, you've been incredibly patient and I'd like to make sure nothing's been missed here in what is becoming quite a lengthy thread. Do you have many recordings on your box - incase this does end up with it being replaced? I'm not making any promises or suggesting anything here, just merely trying to cover off some of the questions that may get asked.

Just to caveat off though - if this issue is as intermittent & transitory as it seems to be, that certainly won't be helping the diagnosis and could well be contributing to the "length of time to resolve"

[roy247]

What you could do is record the football on both channels while watching it live and if you do have a problem note when it was and then check your recordings.

[roy247]

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@roy247 wrote:

What you could do is record the football on both channels while watching it live and if you do have a problem note when it was and then check your recordings.

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Must have been so engrossed in the football not to realise my mistake, you couldn't record the football on both channels because you only have 103 ITV HD, unless you include 114 ITV +1 in SD and I don't think that would help.🤔

[Zach_R]

Hi @Bob_Jankers,

I am really sorry to hear that these TV signal issues appear to be ongoing for you.

I'd like to take a closer look at what's going on for you here, and as such I'm going to send you a private message in a few moments so that we can acquire some further details from you. Please respond to this at your earliest convenience and we can proceed from there.

Thanks,
 

[Bob_Jankers]

Hi, just to keep everyone up-to-date, @Zach_R has arranged a third engineer visit to try and resolve this fault which unfortunately still continues to happen:

http://bungo.duckdns.org/video/VID_20210629_194432.mp4

Hopefully it'll be third time lucky in finding and fixing this.  Not sure what else can be checked other than what @roy247 suggested in trying a replacement 360 TV box...

Thanks

[John_GS]

Hi Bob_Jankers

Do let us know how the visit goes,

Best,

[Bob_Jankers]

Hi @John_GS

So we've had 3 engineer visits now.  Here's a recap:

The first engineer visit checked all our cabling to our 360 box and checked signal strength etc. No problem found.

Second engineer call out, again checked cabling, signal strength, gave us a new HDMI, checked the outside junction box, and checked the Virgin box in the road.  He claimed to have found a fault in the box in the road and changed some connectors in it.  

Third visit was 3 days ago, the engineer again checked the cables & signal strength but also installed a brand new 360 TV box!

However, this has unfortunately had no effect on this annoyingly intermittent problem, each day we've had these "blips".  Please see my recording tonight (BBC1 HD):

http://bungo.duckdns.org/video/VID_20210705_210726.mp4

@Zach_R, is there anything else left to try or are these signal problems something we have to ignore?

Thanks

[roy247]

Sorry to hear that a new box hasn't fixed your problem. Your video looks like watching Freeview with bad reception, as BBC1 seems to be a regular problem is it possible for Virgin to remotely monitor your signal levels on that channel.