Virgin Media V+ HD extremely slow

cherub1965

sarahblaneuk wrote: »

Thanks Rusty! Virgin Media have said it sounds like a faulty box and are sending someone out tomorrow to have a look. I'm not holding out much hope though

my parents have been having th esame problems,pixilating,having to reboot all the time,had 3 engineers out.in the end the last engineer sdaid it was a reconditioned box and thats why they were having all the hassle.he fitted a brand new box and its been fine ever since.

spike7451

cherub1965 wrote: »

my parents have been having th esame problems,pixilating,having to reboot all the time,had 3 engineers out.in the end the last engineer sdaid it was a reconditioned box and thats why they were having all the hassle.he fitted a brand new box and its been fine ever since.

Cherub,
As NTL/VM ect return collected boxes to Screen & Clean before re-ssueing them,it's nearly impossible to determine if a box is new or not.Having been a Service Engineer for NTL/VM for a number of year before redundency,I doubt very much that the box your parents have is new.Unlike Sky,who but new boxes constantly,VM do not.They buy XXX Thousand of a particular box & only buy more when the stock level reaches a certain point.
Reconditioned boxes are re-packeged in the same boxes as new ones & are used both on installs & service.In my experience,a lot of the boxs' coming out of Screen & Clean still have the existing fault on them if they are faulty when returned. (we stick a fault label on the bottom of the box,telling the screener the fault)

bulktrans

my normal virgin package also is very slow in changing channels and accessing the guide ... off late my broadband connection comes and goes and the webpages dont load properly .. :-(

sarahblaneuk

Just wanted to come and update on what happened with the Enigineer. He turned up and had a look at the box played around with setting and tried 3 different signal boosters attached to the white cable at the back and there was still zero improvement. I asked him what he thought was wrong with the box and he said he thinks its faulty as the input and output signals were all within range. But he couldn't get the on demand service to work no matter how many times he tried. However he didn't have any spare boxes on his van so he had to leave without repairing the fault, but he promised to call back in the morning. Well that never happened and have been on the phone to Virgin Media again for a whopping 1 and a half hours to be told they can't come out now till Monday afternoon. And because we allowed the engineer to leave without repairing the problem there was to be a charge added to the account!! They did agree in the end to credit the account to cancel out the charge. So still no further forward, lets hope Monday brings some luck!!

spike7451

sarahblaneuk wrote: »

Just wanted to come and update on what happened with the Enigineer. He turned up and had a look at the box played around with setting and tried 3 different signal boosters attached to the white cable at the back and there was still zero improvement. I asked him what he thought was wrong with the box and he said he thinks its faulty as the input and output signals were all within range. But he couldn't get the on demand service to work no matter how many times he tried. However he didn't have any spare boxes on his van so he had to leave without repairing the fault, but he promised to call back in the morning. Well that never happened and have been on the phone to Virgin Media again for a whopping 1 and a half hours to be told they can't come out now till Monday afternoon. And because we allowed the engineer to leave without repairing the problem there was to be a charge added to the account!! They did agree in the end to credit the account to cancel out the charge. So still no further forward, lets hope Monday brings some luck!!

He's having you on! They're not signal boosters.They are either Forward Path Equalisers,which are designed to smooth out the signal level slope,or attenuators which bring the forward path signal levels down if they are too high.
These are them:


I'll bet he did'nt check the signal levels at the the ETB (gray box outside) or the Isolator (White box)

sarahblaneuk

Thanks Spike thats exactly what he put in the back of the box a Forward path attenuators a 6 db !! Really beginning to wish i'd gone with skys HD package instead, but we'll see what happens Monday.

spike7451

I see you're in Scotland which is classed as the Celtic Region (inc Wales & N.Ireland,where I am)
If you like & this does'nt get resolved,I'll see if I can get the name of the Service Manager for your area & a mailing address,but I wont be able to get this before Monday.

sarahblaneuk

thanks again Spike that would be brilliant, Hopefully I wont need to use it but its always handy if Monday brings more bad news.

polkadot

How'd you get on today Sarah? Hope you dont mind me "hijacking" your thread for a minute-I was on the phone again with VM today for just over an hour.

We've also had the trouble with pixilating-seems to be on all the "V extra channels" so HD and all the +1 channels.
It started out in April, they sent an engineer out. As Spike suggested they should,they checked signal levels & the forward/return path. He told me that the problem was because we had an old Dolby box, there was a compatibility issue with the new smart card we had received a few weeks earlier. He said they still didn't have a "fix" and were aiming to get one out in three weeks. Id get instructions in the post. I called retentions on the 15th of April and told them this, they apologised and reimbursed me 3 weeks worth of tv charges.

Three weeks later I called again, problem still there and no word, they sent another engineer-he checked the same thing and rambled about it being HD ports being overloaded in Swansea so they swapped some of the channels over or some such nonsense-he would have a principal engineer look at it. ITs gotten progressively worse and over the last few days we've not been able to watch anything HD or +1-pixilating has been so bad theres virtually no audio.

Called again today to see if we could get the box swapped, as it seems they've done all they can signal related with no result. First I was told I couldnt have an engineer until Id been through to second line, it woulld be referred and if the problem persisted I should cal again tomorrow. When I said that wasn't good enough and wanted her to give me the date from her notes of when I called in April she told me she couldnt as I was not the account holder (I am in possession of account password and after many months of arguing about not contacting my husband over a previous incident, there is a flag on the account saying I deal with it-hence the password:mad:) She also told me she didn't like my attitude. I asked at this point to be put back to retentions. EVENTUALLY spoke to a manager there who said it sounds like I need a new box, but he cant authorise that until an engineers been.

I have one booked for Wednesday afternoon.

Back in June last year we moved into our new house on our installation was a disaster, we ended up having some technical manager coming out and doing it himself, he gave me his mobile number incase of any further issues. Should I use his mobile after Wednesday if we have no resolution?

sarahblaneuk

Hi Polkadot I really dont mind you crashing my thread! Hope you get somewhere on Wednesday

Well the Engineer came today and I think he seemed to know what he was talking about, he replaced to box with a new Samsung HD and so far things seem good. Hubby seems to think we have reduced picture quality with the new box though but only on certain channels, we tried changing the picture settings from 720 to 1080 and it made no difference. At least we can change the channel and watch a programme with zero pixalation.

Thanks everyone for all their help and advice.