Allowed to access brown box outside of home.

[kegnkiwi]

Hello all,

Could anyone tell me if we are allowed to access the brown box outside out house. I initally had phone and broadband only it my first year. I upgraded to tv and was sent to v6 box and splitter cables. I'm on project lightening so cable comes into house into the white box  and then under floorboards to near where all by ethenet cables are laid. The v6 box is no where near the tv box so a splitter has been put inline before the router and the coax goes under the floor boards and up at the back of the tv. Problem is i am getting some pixleating on such channels as sky one, and discovery. Both channels are sd. I think this may be due to a lots electrical points and speakers near the split causing interferece. I've tried to insulate all the connections to stop this and its not much better. Question is can i go into the brown box outside and run a new cable or is this strictly virgin employees. If so how much is a call out?

[Ernie_C]

Virgin Media only. Non-fault call out charge of £25. Arrange via Customer Services or wait here a few days for Virgin Media to respond.

[japitts]

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@kegnkiwi wrote:

Problem is i am getting some pixleating on such channels as sky one, and discovery.

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You've not said whether these are SD or HD channels, and it can help narrow the issue down, however.... the one-line summary....

Pixellating pictures on live TV are indicative of a signal fault. Reboot your box once, and if that fails to rectify, you have a service fault that will need an engineer callout. There's no charge for that.

Either call in, or wait on here (staff response on here is currently a couple of days) to report this.

[kegnkiwi]

Hi Japitts,

Thanks for reply, i did but in my 1st post these are sd channels. HD channels work fine. Internet is fine as well nearly 385mb. 

If its an engineer call not sure they would be interested, would they still look if it's an own install of coax under the floor?

[japitts · Accepted solution]

The only reason for asking about SD/HD was that digital TV platforms (of which VM is one) broadcast channels in clusters (known as multiplexes) which don't often bear any resemblance to their EPG positions. A signal fault affecting one broadcast TX is likely to affect all the channels on that frequency, so there may be commonality. It won't help progress the fault, but you can check QVC Style SD & Pick SD, both of which are FTV, and co-muxed with Sky Max SD (which I assume is what you mean by referencing Sky One)

Anyhow, I think the official answer would be that if you have any self-installed cabling, some eyes of suspicion would fall on that first. Certainly I'd imagine the VM tech would want to check all your cabling end-end, and if the "self-install" bit is at all suspect, may want to replace that with VM-supplied co-ax. Officially all of VM's cabling forms part of their network, and should only be installed & maintained by them.

Call it in, or wait on here for a VM response... but either way, it'll need "hands & eyes" physically on your kit, which can't be done remotely.

[LittleMick73]

Hi if the cable was not supplied and fitted by virgin, the only people that should fit coxial cables then you may find yourself on dodgy ground. Regards Micky

[kegnkiwi]

So I did not make a call into virgin just yet, got home from work last night and decided to put to the test that I think there was electrical/magnetic interference from where the splitter was sited. So i've pulled extra cable through from the lightning box and pulled extra coax from under the floorboards and extended the patch lead to the router and moved the splitter approx 1.5m away from all the sockets and telephones and speaker. After doing this I have yet not seen one glitch. I'll keep on testing.