BT Vision problems

[bartlett23]

Been having recording problems with BT Vision for several months now. 3 different boxes, 2 engineer visits and 2 home hubs later and it still doesn't work, anyone got any advice? About to chuck the damn thing away to be honest but giving it one last shot...

 

[Alsone]

You sure its not line drops or errors that are causing the problems?

I've been on the internet since it started and never had a totally reliable line in all that time. My regularly slows / drops for a few secs.

To me the idea of having tv over the internet is the worst one ever, it simply doesn't have the reliability of cable / broadcast.

 

[Anonymous]

bartlett23:Been having recording problems with BT Vision for several months now. 3 different boxes, 2 engineer visits and 2 home hubs later and it still doesn't work, anyone got any advice? About to chuck the damn thing away to be honest but giving it one last shot...

What specifically do you mean by recording problems? If it's an issue with recording from freeview then changing the home hub wont make any difference at all except insofar as the EPG is populated from BT's Servers.

Is video on demand working ok?

Paul

 

[Anonymous]

Alsone:

You sure its not line drops or errors that are causing the problems?

I've been on the internet since it started and never had a totally reliable line in all that time. My regularly slows / drops for a few secs.

To me the idea of having tv over the internet is the worst one ever, it simply doesn't have the reliability of cable / broadcast.

<pedant> I doubt that you've been on the internet since it started, </pedant>

BT Vision has worked perfectl;y for me for over 12 months now which is pretty reliable as far as I'm concerned. Other services may be more appropriate for other people, but for me the free PVR, tv catchup covering BBC, CH4, ITV and CH5, the wealth of video on demand and the ability of dip in and out of packs make it an excellent service.

 

[bartlett23]

alsone, paul, thanks for getting back to me

as regards the recordings, i'll record something and attempt to watch it back. occasionally it'll work but usually it will just say 'finished' at some random point during the recording, sometimes right at the very beginning without playing anything at all. this is despite the fact that the blue progress bar along the bottom suggests that the whole programme is there. the red light will remain on throughout the recording also. haven't really used on-demand but the free trailers seem to be ok.

i did ask BT whether it was an issue with 'line drops' or errors but they assured me this couldn't possibly be the case. probably because this would be tantamount to admitting that a TV recording service over an occasionally unreliable broadband connection wasn't a very good idea in the first place! this seems like the most likely scenario to me though. whatever it is i wish they'd sort it, it's been going on for months!

cheers,

steve

 

[Alsone]

pbiggs:I doubt that you've been on the internet since it started, </pedant>

You believe what you like - I was on BT internet on dial up in early 90's which is round about when the 1st ISP's started to make access available in the uk.

Also, no offence but acting as an advert for BT Vision does nothing to help the OP solve his problem.

@ Bartlett, I don't know if connection problems are the cause of your failed recordings but it sounds possible to me.

Unfortunately, if it is, I have little hope for you in getting a solution. I had around 5 or 6 years of nothing but trouble with my broadband and BT wouldn't even send me an engineer (to the best of my memory). It was so bad I left and went to Talk Talk. I still had problems there but after 2 years finally got some serious help and 3 engineers (although each one was a struggle to get). They found multiple problems at the exchange and on the line. I now have a much better line, but it still slows and pauses occasionally when the SNR ratio goes low although it rarely drops completely now.

However, the chances of me ever recording anything without interruption are I think remote and considering I don't actually know anyone with a 100% reliable fast connection other than our poster above, I have to say my view of TV over the internet remains the same.

I still have BT trying to get me back as a customer - no chance!!! My phone / broadband costs on average £20-23 per month all in now compared to £60 per month with BT and I have a better line!
(all phone calls except 0845's and mobiles, both domestic and international are free 24/7)
As for TV, I've bought HD Freesat. A far more reliable option I think.

 

[bartlett23]

i honestly can't see BT being able to fix it and have resigned myself to the fact that there's something fundamentally and irreparably wrong with my connection somewhere along the line, it's a victorian house after all with rather old looking cabling everywhere. freesat it is for me too i think.

cheers,

steve

 

[Anonymous]

bartlett23:

alsone, paul, thanks for getting back to me

as regards the recordings, i'll record something and attempt to watch it back. occasionally it'll work but usually it will just say 'finished' at some random point during the recording, sometimes right at the very beginning without playing anything at all. this is despite the fact that the blue progress bar along the bottom suggests that the whole programme is there. the red light will remain on throughout the recording also. haven't really used on-demand but the free trailers seem to be ok.

i did ask BT whether it was an issue with 'line drops' or errors but they assured me this couldn't possibly be the case. probably because this would be tantamount to admitting that a TV recording service over an occasionally unreliable broadband connection wasn't a very good idea in the first place! this seems like the most likely scenario to me though. whatever it is i wish they'd sort it, it's been going on for months!

cheers,

steve

Hi Steve

It's highly unlikely to be anything to do with the line because the line is irrelevant to the problem , the problem seems to occur when you use the box as a simple Freeview PVR rather than when using the VOD functionality so nothing other than the EPG information is coming down the line and as the red recording light comes on and goes off at the correct times that isn't the issue.

Logically the problem is either something to do with the box which would seem to be unlikely as you've had several of them or something to do with the signal/aerial - somewhere within the BT Vision menu there is a signal strength indicator (right hand menu option on the main menu I think) - might be useful to see what that is saying. Might also be worthwhile doing a channel rescan.

Did you have freeview prior to BT Vision? If so, did you have any issues with the signal, pixellation etc?

Paul

 

[Anonymous]

Alsone:pbiggs:I doubt that you've been on the internet since it started, </pedant>

You believe what you like - I was on BT internet on dial up in early 90's which is round about when the 1st ISP's started to make access available in the uk.

Also, no offence but acting as an advert for BT Vision does nothing to help the OP solve his problem.

No offence taken, I did say I was being pedantic on the first point. Obviously the internet goes back a lot further than the early 90's but as a retail proposition in the UK you're correct.

I don't think that what I said was an advert, more of a balancing opinion - I read this forum for information regarding Hi-Fi and I'd rather read all shades of opinion on say Arcam amps as it helps me to get a fuller understanding. Obviously a TV service that relies on BT's infrastructure isn't going to work for everyone but BT do a line check before signing up Vision customers and as there are 4,000 new customers per week I can only assume that for the vast majority the technology works fine.

Paul

 

[Anonymous]

Alsone:pbiggs:I doubt that you've been on the internet since it started, </pedant>

However, the chances of me ever recording anything without interruption are I think remote and considering I don't actually know anyone with a 100% reliable fast connection other than our poster above, I have to say my view of TV over the internet remains the same.

<snip>

As for TV, I've bought HD Freesat. A far more reliable option I think.

With BT Vision the recording functions have nothing to do with the line speed, the box is a Freeview PVR, it's only the Video on Demand that uses the broadband connection and as soon as you select something to watch on demand Quality of Service is applied to the line so it's highly unlikely that there would be a problem with watching something (I use TV Catchup almost every day and I can think of perhaps 5 occasions in the last 12 months when there's been a problem and then it's simply been a case of re-selecting the item - the server remembers where you've got to and resumes play - if you change channel half way through and come back a week later it will resume where you left off.

Paul

 

[bartlett23]

hey paul.

if what you're saying is true then maybe, just maybe, BT will get to the bottom of this.

like you say, i've had several replacement boxes and 2 hubs. the only part of the entire connection that hasn't been replaced is the ethernet cable between hub and Vision box. i've nailed it along the skirting board and can't be bothered to replace it as surely it can't be that? would be funny if it was though.

as regards freeview signal, i previously used the built in freeview on my toshiba LCD and had no issues with that whatsoever. apart from on channel 5 (although this seems to work perfectly all of a sudden, have they sorted it out?). when i switched to Vision the signal was not as strong due to the extra journey between external aerial and TV, but this only really happened when it started raining and a signal booster fixed it completely. the Vision helpdesk have checked the signal strength over the phone with me and they said it was more than adequate.

maybe i'm not pressing the buttons in the correct way or something!

cheers,

steve

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Steve

I'd certainly rescan for channels - BT send system updates out overnight every so often and I think part of the process is that the box reboots and rescans for channels - it may be that when it last did that just happened to co-incide with a period of poorr reception or something.

If a rescan has no effect then it could be worthwhile raising it on BT's Vision forum as it's monitored by BT Staff who do look into and resolve issues for people:

http://www.beta.bt.com/bta/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=7

Paul

 

[Alsone]

Hi Paul,

I agree that recording has nothing to do with the line speed. My point rather was that if the line drops then comes back up then information can get lost and the recording corrupted as a result. Its was that, that I thought might be causing it to stop 1/2 way through playback.

Steve does need to try to rule out box problems as well though. My advice would be start with the box (ie get them to swap it out) then work your way back through the cabling to the line if the problem persists.

Also, if you have a seperate router on the line for eg. your pc, then by going into the router staistics page, you should be able to compare the time the router has been up with the time the line has been up. If they're not the same there's been a problem. Usually the router will report the time of any line drop.

This is the kind of router page you're looking for on your pc (found this on the net it isn't mine but is the same router as I've got):

Router Status:

Item Description
Product Name EchoLife HG520s
Physical Address 00:1b:9e:9d:21:40
Software Release V100R001B023 TT
Firmware Release 3.5.19.9-1.0.7.0
Batch Number RTC10P6
Release Date 2006/12/19
ADSL Description

ADSL State Show Time
Data Path Interleaved
Operation Mode ADSL2+
Bandwidth Down/Up(kbps) 4367 / 443
SNR Margin Down/Up(dB) 8.0 / 21.6
Attenuation Down/Up(dB) 46.0 / 27.2
Power Down/Up(dBm) 0.0 / 12.3
CRC Down/Up 41 / 65504
FEC Down/Up 56907 / 65400
HEC Down/Up 218 / 0
System Up Time 10:02:26
DSL Up Time 0:13:55
PVC Select PVC-0
PPP Up Time 0:13:15

You'll notice on this guys stats the system up time is 10 hours 2 minutes and 26 seconds yet the DSL up time is only 13 minutes 55 seconds. This indicates the router has been working for the former time but the line has only had a broadbacnd signal for the latter time. In other words it dropped approximately 14 or 15 minutes ago. PPP up time is the same here but this is the line syncronisation time and if less than the DSL time can indicate a synconisation problem.

 

[bartlett23]

hi paul

rescanning for channels is one of those infuriating things the helpdesk suggests when they get me to perform 'diagnostics'. it could work but i've tried that sort of thing so many times now and have little faith in it working. will probably give it another go though, cheers.

thanks for the link to the Vision forum, just left a post on there, will see what comes of that. looks like there are few people on there having the same problem...

 

[bartlett23]

maybe i'll forward this to the next BT technician i speak to, it might make more sense to him!

seriously though, i sort of get where you're coming from and it's certainly something to raise with BT, they don't seem to be coming up with much other than 'try resetting your Vision box'. as you can imagine, this isn't the most helpful of suggestions.

it's a shame really as Vision's clearly got potential as a product but was maybe rushed onto the market a bit too quickly. BT have got till christmas to sort it after which i'm getting a humax freesat PVR. although that will probably do exactly the same thing!

 

[bartlett23]

it appears that turning the TV off at the wall was causing these problems, in case anyone's interested. if the TV is on standby or on, BT Vision will record no problem. does this sound plausible? apparently the same goes for sky+?

 

[Alsone]

TBH that sounds very unplausible to me.

The internet line goes into your hub then an aerial feed out to the tv doesn't it? Why should an ouput have anything to do with an input?

Its like saying having the tv off when recording on a video recorder will stop the recording as the set ups the same - an aerial comes into the video recorder then out to the tv.

It would cost you a fortune to leave your TV in standby 24/7 - some use literally 70 or 80 watts.

I can't see it myslef but if BT vision does work that way then the best thing you can do is get rid!!

 

[bartlett23]

it seemed pretty implausible to me too but it only seems to work that way. my TV doesn't have an on/off button, if i don't want to leave it on standby i have to turn it off at the wall. this isn't a massive deal, i just have to make sure i leave it on standby if i want to record something when i'm out or in bed or whatever.

a mate of mine had Sky+ installed recently and the engineer told him his TV needs to be turned ON at the wall if the recording facility is to work. all very weird as surely the HDR records through the external aerial or satellite dish, not through the TV? oh well, BT Vision works now at least!