Pixelation and network issues

[UnderdogRescue]

For the last 2 weeks I've had pixelation on a number of live channels on my V6 box.

I've rebooted, checked all the connections and had 2 engineers visit all to no avail. I did my own research and using the diagnostics screen it's fairly clear it's not an issue with my box or the cabling within my property. Both engineers have said it's a problem with the connection at the cabinet but they can't solve it as apparently that's a different company. The guys on the customer service phone line can't access the network team so what should be a simple fix is turning out to be impossible.

The diagnostics show a signal strength on all tuners around 85-90% the SNR is between 32-34db, the RS uncorrected is in the hundreds of millions and rising and the RS corrected is in the tens of millions and also rising.  

I've even reported damage to the cabinet on the automated line for the network all to no avail. 

HELP!!

[japitts · Accepted solution]

---

@UnderdogRescue wrote:

For the last 2 weeks I've had pixelation on a number of live channels on my V6 box.

Both engineers have said it's a problem with the connection at the cabinet but they can't solve it as apparently that's a different company.

---

I've highlighted the two points it's worth a non-staff response to...

1: Can you be specific about which channels? Including SD/HD - there may be commonality without you realising.

2: The entire network from your box through to the regional headend which receives the channel feeds is all Virgin Media - but they're different areas/engineers.

The tech that visits your home should be escalating any issues within VM, and how they do that shouldn't be of any concern to you - you report a fault, it should just happen. Clearly a C/S process is failing here.

VM staff should be along in a day or so to respond to this.

[UnderdogRescue]

---

@japitts wrote:

---

@UnderdogRescue wrote:

For the last 2 weeks I've had pixelation on a number of live channels on my V6 box.

Both engineers have said it's a problem with the connection at the cabinet but they can't solve it as apparently that's a different company.

---

I've highlighted the two points it's worth a non-staff response to...

1: Can you be specific about which channels? Including SD/HD - there may be commonality without you realising.

2: The entire network from your box through to the regional headend which receives the channel feeds is all Virgin Media - but they're different areas/engineers.

The tech that visits your home should be escalating any issues within VM, and how they do that shouldn't be of any concern to you - you report a fault, it should just happen. Clearly a C/S process is failing here.

VM staff should be along in a day or so to respond to this.

---

Thanks for the reply,

On point 1, I can't get any HD channels and the channels I can get aren't always available and the quality is way down compared to normal

All the BT sport channels are unwatchable and have been throughout

The only sport channels that I can vaguely watch are 512, 515, 516 and 517

All the movie channels except 425, 426, 428 and 429 (grt and film4) went out about a week ago and have been unwatchable since then.

I can watch 101 sometimes,

and the following :

109,110,112,116,117,120,124-131, 135, 137, 143, 160, 174, 180, 183, 189, 190, 191, 194, 196, 207, 213, 226, 245, 246, 252, 257, 258, 266, 267, 269, 271, 274, 280, 286, 290, 310, 312, 313, 316, 337, 346, 347, 348, 603, 625, 731, 737, 740, 853 and that's it.

The radio channels are useless which is a bit of a surprise as I assumed they'd not need as strong a signal to get through but clearly they do.

Finally all on demand stuff works perfectly with a great picture as does iplayer and Amazon Prime

With regard to point 2 - I couldn't agree more, however for some reason the guys on the phone lines can ONLY call an engineer to visit my home and not one that deals with the cabinet hardware and neither of the engineers who visited me escalated it (other than putting notes on my account)  which as you say is a complete C/S fail.

[UnderdogRescue]

I may have inadvertently marked this issue as resolved and as of 6pm Friday it is still outstanding, do I need to modify this post or start a new one to get a reply from one of the VM staff?   

[japitts]

Unbeknown to yourself, you may have just put yourself to the back of the staff queue by adding to the thread - the staff work through posts in date order and 2-3 days is about right.

Given the extent of your issues and that you're being rather patient, I will escalate this to forum staff so you don't have to wait another few day.d.

Edited to add - whatever you do, please don't start duplicate posts for the same issue, it just causes further confusion.

[UnderdogRescue]

---

@japitts wrote:

Unbeknown to yourself, you may have just put yourself to the back of the staff queue by adding to the thread - the staff work through posts in date order and 2-3 days is about right.

Given the extent of your issues and that you're being rather patient, I will escalate this to forum staff so you don't have to wait another few day.d.

Edited to add - whatever you do, please don't start duplicate posts for the same issue, it just causes further confusion.

---

Thank you , that's very kind. I shall refrain from further posting so I don't do the same thing (putting myself to the back of the queue) again, however I did wish to express my gratitude.

[Steven_L]

Welcome to the community and thanks for getting in touch with us here on the forums @UnderdogRescue.

I have looked into your account and can see that the team have raised the issues with your local cabinet to our maintenance team, I will try to get a further update on this from the maintenance team and get back to you as soon as I have any response from them.

Regards,

Steven_L

[UnderdogRescue]

---

@Steven_L wrote:

Welcome to the community and thanks for getting in touch with us here on the forums @UnderdogRescue.

I have looked into your account and can see that the team have raised the issues with your local cabinet to our maintenance team, I will try to get a further update on this from the maintenance team and get back to you as soon as I have any response from them.

Regards,

Steven_L

---

Hi Steven, 

Thanks for the reply and for looking into it.

I look forward to hearing the update from the maintenance team.

Some additional information which may or may not be relevant:

My own personal experience when I first joined 4 years ago was that every few weeks my service would be interrupted due to a new connection for someone locally. The nodes/connections at the cabinet were either switched around or disturbed which caused internet problems but also a loss of tv service. This situation settled down after a year and hasn't recurred as far as I know.

I was reminded of this when I spoke to the last C/S person on the phone who thought that might be the issue in this case as certain cabinets in busy areas of London were overloaded and some new connections were being made at the expense of existing users. i.e. a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. 

As I said I don't know that this is what's happened but as it was raised to me as a possibility I thought I'd mention it in case it's helpful.

[Sofia_B]

Thanks for getting back to us and providing additional information @UnderdogRescue. 

I'll be sure to pass this over to my colleague Steven who has raised the issue with the relevant teams for you. 

Thanks,  

[UnderdogRescue]

So.....

Over the weekend things went further downhill.

I lost more channels and then my internet started playing up.

I reset my router, my V6 box, checked all the connections again and as expected nothing changed.

By the early afternoon today my internet had slowed to the point where I had less than 1mb download (normally 350+) and my upload was 0.1mb (normally 35+) this was both on wifi and ethernet. I have an Asus wifi router which I bought 18 months ago and has done a great job compared to the Virgin router which is now just in modem mode. 

So whilst i'm mindful of the efforts being made by the helpful people on this forum, by 3pm I had reached the end of my tether as the issues have made working almost impossible and the lack of TV is just ridiculous... I only have access to recorded programmes (it has to be the ones I did over a month ago as more recent ones weren't watchable) the only live channel that worked was 603 and on demand was no longer working with various error codes like W02 and C133.

So I called the C/S line again to try and get some answers.

I wasn't really expecting much, the C/S rep I spoke to checked the notes on my file, two separate engineer reports stated that a network engineer was required but not that one had actually been booked to look at it. The damage to the cabinet I reported last week was also on file - no actions to remedy it, just the damage report.

She did another test which she had to do procedurally and then helpfully dug a bit further and found that even though the fault line showed no issues on TV or broadband, she discovered that apparently 25% of the users in my location had also been experiencing problems since this morning - No clue where she got that info from but it was helpful!

As a consequence of this new information she was able to order an 'enhanced' engineer who apparently has access to the cabinets and that it would be sorted within 48 hours. If it helps, the reference id for this is 10733211960.

My concern is that this new issue may be separate from my original one so I have asked if the engineer can call me when he's done so I can check if his fix has solved everything or just the new ones from this weekend. At the risk of sounding jaded, I've had issues for almost a month, been promised fixes galore, call backs 4 times and have yet to receive a single call and obviously no fix which is why I'm detailing the situation on here.

Please don't stop your efforts as I'm grateful for them and rather hoping that I'll get an answer here before I get an actual fix and of course it might help other people too.