My TV picture hangs for a number of seconds (no sound) then recovers. Any channel may do it. Happens every day. Some hangs are longer than others.
My gear is as follows: Wellington Cable. T-Box Model HT500a IPG Version 2.9.26 OS Version 03072012-54 Tuner strength 82% Video Out Cable to: DMR-BW850 Panasonic Recorder HDMI Cable to: TH-42PV60A Panasonic TV.
The hanging is becoming more regular. Power-up modem and T-Box about once a month.
Is there something I can do to overcome the hanging.
kg1: My TV picture hangs for a number of seconds (no sound) then recovers. Any channel may do it. Happens every day. Some hangs are longer than others. ... Is there something I can do to overcome the hanging.
Unless you've had your cable checked-out recently - report it to TelstraClear and they should send someone out. Given that the T-Box issues are being put down solely to the software (unless there's an identifiable T-Box fault), they will check the signal-levels of your cable from where it enters the house through to the T-Box.
kg1: My TV picture hangs for a number of seconds (no sound) then recovers. Any channel may do it. Happens every day. Some hangs are longer than others.
Had this problem ("behaviour" - must remember the terminology) since early in the year, at least once or twice a day. Cable signal strength was suggested as a cause by TCL, but that checked out fine (apparently) on tech visit. So it might be or it might not.
Good luck getting an answer to the "Is there something I can do..." question, one or two people have been saying a similar thing to TelstraClear for quite a while now ;-)
I have had all the above checked by a technician and still get the problems shown in the above posts. I don't even bother reporting them as it is much quicker to reboot before being asked to by telestra. On two occasions over the past week the screen went black whilst watching a program. Also lost a program that we were recording. It is annoying but at least a reboot has fixed these problems or is that behaviours.
Thank you for the replies. I have logged a fault with TelstraClear. Years ago in response to a different fault I recall a technician suggesting I probably had water in the cable. I listed the current fault on the forum hoping to find out if other consumers were getting the same hanging of picture without lost of service. I thought the delay of picture might be a Telstra mechanism to block interference or satelite misalignment. But if other consumers do not have the same problem this can not be so.
From my DVD recorder I also receive free to air without the same hanging of picture. Hence it must be either the T-Box or the Cable. The T-Box shows (in Settings) a strength of 82%. I believe that is good. It could be memory/buffer in the T-Box overflowing or running into corrupt memory. The hanging is so well managed it seems to be a programmed response which enables its recovery.
Originally TelstraClear promised extra channels. Now its 99% SkyTV. Perhaps it is time to try SkyTV?
After sitting here smugly for some months whilst others complained of freezing & pixellation I was struck by this problem on all my recordings on tuner 2. Did some experimenting & found that recordings on tuner 2 were dodgy while recordings on tuner 3 were OK (and live TV was mercifully free of this problem as well).
Having had enough I rang the help number only to be told it was my own fault - you see my cable modem had been up for 66 days and that was a ridiculous amount of time to run that device without power cycling. I took this like a man (silence) and rebooted the modem, then the T-Box, then the endless wait for "updating". Did a test recording and - to my great surprise - no freezing or pixellation.
I have been rebooting the T-Box itself weekly for ages as that seemed the best way to keep the gremlins at bay. Seems that a regular reboot of the cable modem is probably a good prophylactic.
Naturally, I did inquire as to why Telstra had not sent out an advisory to T-Box customers suggesting this be done regularly. She took it like a man
i4n, I am sorry to hear of your terrible problems with your T-box. Sounds more like hardware than software to me, but what do I know? I am currently not experiencing any problems with my T-box except the annoying occasional pauses and pixellation. I do, however, have the same problem you have with iSky, which is useless for watching any kind of sport, that's for sure. The constant buffering makes it impossible! Haven't tried any other broadcasts on there. You would think that ordinary TC cable speed would be more than sufficient, wouldn't you? I wonder how the service goes for Sky customers.
Just curious about how you manage to link iSky to your TelstraClear account. The iSky T's & C's seem to specifically disallow this. Do you have to pay an additional subscription on top of your TelstrClear sub?
KaroriPete: Hi I4N, Just curious about how you manage to link iSky to your TelstraClear account. The iSky T's & C's seem to specifically disallow this. Do you have to pay an additional subscription on top of your TelstrClear sub?
When you register there's a space (somewhere - can't remember) to put your TelstraClear account number.
I'm guessing its been provisioned but who knows when they are going to officially release it - last time I asked about 2 months ago I was told to "watch this space"...
If you go to iSky, click "Register", and then select "Link your account" an option appears to select your provider (Sky, Vodafone, Telecom, or TelstraClear) and then to put in your account details with that provider.
It works, mostly - you can get to the live channels and most catch-up. The major limitation compared to Sky direct customers is that neither SoHo nor ESPN3 work at all, even when you're subscribed to them.
Well, my T-Box is down hard again. No channels. T-Box signal strength per the menu is 87%. Yes everything else in the T-box work except that it doesnt do live TV.
Hard Reset, and called faults. Came back up. Went down again.
Called Faults Reboot. Came back up, went down again
Called Faults They did an Entitlement update, still no live TV.
They deactivated the account. We waited until it wasn't recieving channels again. Reactivated the account.
Still nothing.
Technician booked, for Tuesday. Asked for the digital decoder back, Now that could be a problem because it takes Customer Service 4 days to do a change of service. Told them to make sure that the Tech brings a another T-box with him, if he is not able to bring the digital decoder.
Another 4 days without a service, and they wonder why I'm not in a hurry to pay their bill.
Well if customer CARE did actually CARE about customer's they would call the customer back, when it was requested. Apparently it is suppsed to take them 1 to 2 days. So far they have never called me. Faults tech said he would call them, then call me and transfer them to me. Got to give hime points for trying.
The T-Box is a joke. It doesn't work and is not fit for service. And why does iSKY not work, when i get this type of download speed?
I've just submitted a report to TCL via their "Ask a question" form. Over the past month pretty much every recording has pixelation (mostly green blocks over part of all of the screen), sound dropouts (which can completely change the meaning of the script), pauses in the video, and the occasional audio squawk. Oddly, the HD recordings of the Olympics on Prime are of very good quality. My thoughts would be that this quality on Prime was at the expense of the quality of the other channels.
My solution is to watch even less TV via my T-Box, and more via "other (legal) means". Unfortunately my Internet plan is not really keeping up with my change in viewing habits.
Well, Feeling kind of lucky, here was I thinking that I was lucky escaping the failed recording dilemma. Was quietly confident that Christchurch has had its fail share of "failures" and that this was a "north island" problem. Well fool me.
Now I know that a sacrifice of your youngest child has worked in the past (other civilisations) to make the gods happy, but hey - we are in the 21st century. I mean - we can send a probe to Mars, land it (phew - this one didnt SPLAT) and see pictures from the surface of the red planet.
SO WHY THE HELL CANT WE GET A SIMPLE TV SYSTEM TO WORK!
I think that we would have more chance of seeing the bosun higgs particle than seeing a T-Box that works. (Maybe someone should take the little piece of technological dog poo and hit it with a few million particles travelling at near light speed - may not fix the problem, but sure as hell would be fun to watch, that is unless it is streamed via the T-Box, in which case all you will see is pixles, failed recordings and static noise.
Being a keen follower of water polo, and one that does need more than 3 hours of sleep a night, I took the misguided step of programming the T-Box every night to record the games. First mistake. Seems that SKY (dodged that one TC!) want to keep changing the EPG (at least that is what my little box of joy keeps telling me.
So, right, TC - does SKY change the EPG codes within hours of the event? if so, then how can I sit up late and put in a reminder for the same game, yet the recording fails, the prompt works. One (being of simple mind, still slighlty sane) would naturally assume that the code for each would be the same.
oh well, maybe in the next millenium we will see a functional system - LIGHTSPEED I see on the billboards - thats the speed that TC runs at to avoid any service to the T-Box users, always in the opposite direction!
Gary, no point in logging the fault - its known to the system (well at least 1 in 7 call centre operators) but man, if this was my pet and was so sick I would seriously have to think about what was best for its quality of life.
Well we cancelled our T-Box in June and it's still causing problems! Due to all the issues we had with it plus the fact it completely died they agreed to let us out of our contract early and switch us to the $75 phone/broadband plan and gave us a full month's credit for the T-Box. Today I get our bill which I expect to be around the $75 month and it's $203 over that! They have charged us an early termination fee - ARGH!!!! Rang them and was told the notes don't really say much so they have referred it to someone else. They had bloody well better sort this out. I am NOT paying $200 for something that never did what it was supposed to do. I thought they had dealt with it so well at the time we cancelled the T-Box and then this happens.
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