SnowWookie: ... Broadband speed during work hours (i.e. mon-fri 9-5) is appalling. I sometimes work from home and often find myself wondering if I'd be better off on dialup.
Where are you located? Are you using a multi-stream downloader?
I am i Christchurch and on sunday night our tv decoder died, when i rang TCL on monday they said they had had an "incident" and a tech would have to come out and replace the decoder, the soonist possible time is thursday, that's four days !, after i am guessing one of their remote decoder updates went bad.
I too have noticed broadband is very slow during the day here, sometimes the email is worse than dailup, we have been with TLC since they first brought cable to CHCH as we are close to where there cable comes ashore but i really wonder how long we will stay with them, no tv for four days annoys me alot.
I live in the Kapiti area and we had a similar problem a month or so ago.
According to the tech that replaced the box the power supply in the box had failed. We have had several drop outs on the TV in the last week and I always have difficultly resetting the epg, even after following their procedure to rest it.
Yes I've noticed lots of dropouts on Telstra TV over the last week. Could it be the weather? Just some channels are randomly unavailable.
But I've never had one single problem with my cable. It's been absolutely stellar, in fact. Can't say I've noticed any times of day being better than others.
Ive had the same issues with the DTV EPG, sometimes even after resetting the modem i can only get the NOW and NEXT parts and nothing else :(
But the cable internet (10mbd 2mbu) i swear by, i can consistenly speedtest @ the advertised speeds at any time of the day with my worst result about 7-8mbit(local speedtest server).
A well seeded torrent will also go full speed which i dont think is possible on alot of other isp's by the look of some of the threads on GZ.
I wasnt impressed though when they put their internet prices up when everyone else's were comming down and even less impressed recently when they removed MTV and E! from the basic DTV package - so i cancelled the DTV.
halfbaked: I wasnt impressed though when they put their internet prices up when everyone else's were comming down and even less impressed recently when they removed MTV and E! from the basic DTV package - so i cancelled the DTV.
Not missing much. MTV is 90% horrible US reality TV drivel, and the small amount of music they do play is plastic hip-hop soft porn videos.
I have been with TCL for years for Phone services, which I have to say they surpass with, but have recently moved to Christchurch and started using there Cable system.
Now I have triple service, Internet, TV and Phone, for a $13 discount which keeps the family happy :)
I spoke to many down here who raved about TCL Cable Internet, before coming down here, but I have to say the 10Mb speed is nothing really to write home about. I had DSL before moving to Christchurch, and received a pretty good speed, 8Mb down and approx 600Kb up, so moving to Cable has given me only a slightly noticeable increase in performance, mainly with upload and lack of disconnections. But Latency is actually worse, While I don't game much anymore, most Steam game servers via DSL gave me a latency of between 10 and 25ms in NZ, but TCL cable gives me 25ms to 50ms in NZ, and 50 to 90ms plus to Aussie. I have lost the ability to play on Internode servers all together thanks to more than 250ms latency because of a routing issue, which I must add TCL doesn't appear interested in fixing.
But that aside, my biggest issue is the cost of there bandwidth packs, which is massively increased and the lack of customizable packs. When I question the TCL staff about them, but they don't even seem interested in talking about it, or brush me off with statements saying, "look at the speed you get!" I don't really care to much about speed if it costs me huge amounts to actually download anything. But again because cable doesn't have any real competitors here, this isn't going to change. And before anyone mentions torrents, I dont torrent.
The TV is just re-broadcasted Sky channels, which isn't overly interesting, other than saving me the problem of having to install a TV aerial.
Phone services are pretty much the same, although cheaper, so no issue there.
TCL need to actually offer something more than they are, even there Zerorated promotion is pretty much a waste of time, as clearnet has bugger all in the way of videos, and Trademe doesn't really use a hell of alot of bandwidth anyway, not to mention there gaming servers.
Sorry guys for the rant, but come on TCL give us some decent services and offerings to actually use the cable for, how about bringing in more decent TCL hosted content, so that we can benefit from the speed.
Haven't had any issues with the cable internet service since I moved from chch to welly - great speeds, and the plans... meh. They need some work on the bandwidth caps, but hey, the internet service seems rock solid to me.
The phone - I can't get in my townhouse in Welly, due to bandwidth issues on the cables (they weren't expecting 25 townhouses to pop up in what was a park when they put the cables in). So yes, they DO do TV and internet without phoneline, if they have to.
TV: Great quality SD, but this has got to be the weak point at the moment. No HD yet, and the ongoing silence is deafening. If the Body Corp signs off the complex moving to sky, or even installing UHF aerials, we'll be gone in a shot. This is a pity, as the tv is reliable and seems to have bandwidth to burn, given the image quality.
-------------------- Geeking for 30 years now. Awesome.
Sky increased pricing just over a month or so ago for their own customers, unfortunately the price increases also affect wholesale customers such as TelstraClear.
rossmnz: im just going by their website, which currently does not let you try to price up a skytv/internet combo.
it says phone line is essential.
Perhaps its one of their marketing ploys and the guys on the sales will actually let you away with it?
TC will let you cancel your phone if your Lightspeed package is high enough. Or at least they did when I last spoke to them about it. This was about a year ago, but it probably hasn't changed. You can't select this option via the website, but the phone guys can do it.
I was told that their contract with Sky will let them do it as long as your package price is above a certain amount. IOW your Lightspeed plan has to be above a certain value.
I ended up changing my mind and keeping the phone, but try ringing and asking.
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