Virgin Media Community

[Argy]

Channel 922 regularly suffers from the m stuttering and breakouts.

Some weeks are better than others - this last week has been a lot worse.

No other channel is affected (sound or video on TV).

Both V6 boxes affected in exactly the same way.

Broadband is fine.

Reboots make no change

All I can do is to pause for a few seconds and then start again on delay. Seems OK then (because feed is buffered perhaps?) 

Thanks to a similar question in 2019 I have tried the Radioline app. 

That is fine. 

But why go through multiple hoops to get something that is on the simple channel guide? 

Can you explain why this one channel (out of all the TV and radios that are on the main guide) has this problem - or even better, fix it without recourse to another app? If I'm going to do that, I'll use Tune in on my phone and cast it to Chromecast instead. 

[nodrogd]

Are any of the other radio stations affected?

All except the BBC stations are carried on the same broadcast mux at the same bitrate. Issues with all the commercial stations may indicate a fault.

There also have been issues in the past caused by over-compression of the streams at source. This is generally due to the station owners not wanting to pay any more for distribution links than they feel is adequate to do the job.

Using apps will always ensure you the maximum quality available. I’m also not sure how long VM will continue to offer radio in this form. On the new Horizon 360 platform the ability to record radio has already been removed. Only older original TiVO users are now dependent on broadcast radio, as they have no access to Radioline.

[Argy]

Thanks for the reply @nodrogd

No other stations are affected, not even other Global ones. 

It may well be the compression, but damned annoying that only one station is affected! If it is the source at fault , I would hope that Virgin might let them know (when I have contacted Gloabl, the answer has been download our app) and blame Virgin. 

But I don't want yet another app, just to listen to something that used to work fine. 

Sometimes, I just want something simple to work.

[japitts]

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@Argy wrote:

It may well be the compression, but damned annoying that only one station is affected! If it is the source at fault , I would hope that Virgin might let them know (when I have contacted Gloabl, the answer has been download our app) and blame Virgin. 

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That would rely on Virgin being aware there's an issue, I have a suspicion there's relatively few customers listening to Classic FM via the EPG.

I'm intrigued by your mention that rewinding and listening to the programme "in delay" resolves the issue - if the problem is on the broadcast mux, then it's effectively "on the channel" and would be retained in any recording. Delayed/rewind is effectively a recording.

IMHO, and without any evidence to support this, the use of excessive compression would not surprise me with any Global-radio outlet, but all the same. Very odd...

[ozsat]

Got it here too now

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@Argy wrote:

Channel 922 regularly suffers from the m stuttering and breakouts.

Some weeks are better than others - this last week has been a lot worse.

No other channel is affected (sound or video on TV).

Both V6 boxes affected in exactly the same way.

Broadband is fine.

Reboots make no change

All I can do is to pause for a few seconds and then start again on delay. Seems OK then (because feed is buffered perhaps?) 

Thanks to a similar question in 2019 I have tried the Radioline app. 

That is fine. 

But why go through multiple hoops to get something that is on the simple channel guide? 

Can you explain why this one channel (out of all the TV and radios that are on the main guide) has this problem - or even better, fix it without recourse to another app? If I'm going to do that, I'll use Tune in on my phone and cast it to Chromecast instead. 

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[ozsat]

The fault should now be fixed - please reply here if it returns.

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@Argy wrote:

Channel 922 regularly suffers from the m stuttering and breakouts.

Some weeks are better than others - this last week has been a lot worse.

[cje85]

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@nodrogd wrote:

Are any of the other radio stations affected?

All except the BBC stations are carried on the same broadcast mux at the same bitrate.

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The stations are broadcast at a variety of bitrates according to https://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?mux=C068&liste=1&live=209&lang=en with Classic FM being the highest of the lot (192Kbps).

[Argy]

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@ozsat wrote:

The fault should now be fixed - please reply here if it returns.

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@Argy wrote:

Channel 922 regularly suffers from the m stuttering and breakouts.

Some weeks are better than others - this last week has been a lot worse.

---

Well it was OK on Wednesday night.

Since then, back to square 1.

Go to Ch922.

Press pause.

Press play.

Now it is OK. 

[nodrogd]

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@cje85 wrote:

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@nodrogd wrote:

Are any of the other radio stations affected?

All except the BBC stations are carried on the same broadcast mux at the same bitrate.

---

The stations are broadcast at a variety of bitrates according to https://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?mux=C068&liste=1&live=209&lang=en with Classic FM being the highest of the lot (192Kbps).

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Meant to say the same bitrate as is carried on satellite, meaning they are not compressed by Virgin to carry them on their networks.

[mikes2400]

The distorted sound on 922 has been like that for a year or two at least. It's as bad as ever tonight. It clearly affects plenty of people (there are older threads as well) Can anyone give me a reason as to why this persistent fault can't be fixed? (apart from the fact that Virgin probably couldn't care less).