Poor DVR Video Quality

[ryanb1281]

Hi All-

We just got U-verse a few days ago.  At first the service kept crashing, but eventually a tech person who came out to our home discovered there was a problem outside the premises with the quality of the signal entering the premises.

Now that the service has been up and running for a little while, I've noticed an odd problem.  The video appears fine when watching live TV, but when watching a DVR'd show (standard def only) we get intermittent lines flashing across the screen every 30 seconds or so (not with any regularity, but that appears to be the average spacing between them).  Perhaps most annoyingly, the lines are accompanied by a crackling in the audio.

Although less regular than the lines/audio problem, we also get pixelation at some points in the recording and even some 2 or 3 seconds freezes in the video.

All of this, however, does not occur when watching the same show live.  It seems kind of odd to me, and I wanted to see if anyone had any ideas.  I looked through the archives here, but I didn't see anything similar, but apologies if I missed something and I'm asking something that has already been answered. 

[showtime48 ACE - Guru]

my uneducated guess would be if it's not happening during a live broadcast but is during a recorded broadcast of the exact same show then it sounds like a HDD problem to me...

[Pip_2]

Ryan, you might also want to post your stats. Just copy and paste them from this page.

http://192.168.1.254/xslt?PAGE=B04&THISPAGE=B01&NEXTPAGE=B04

[ryanb1281]

Okay, here are my stats, but they may appear worse than reality since in the past 24 hours, the RG was replaced and then a few hours later the technician identified and fixed a problem in the wiring outside our premises.  Then service was restored.  However, the problem I am discussing happened in several recordings both before and after this issue.

DSL Link Retrains: 10 10 0 13:43:49  

DSL Training Errors: 185 185 0 15:02:07  

DSL Training Timeouts: 2 2 0 16:43:04  

DSL Loss of Framing Failures: 0 0 0 0:00:00  

DSL Loss of Signal Failures: 0 0 0 0:00:00  

DSL Loss of Power Failures: 0 0 0 0:00:00  

DSL Loss of Margin Failures: 5 5 0 16:06:50  

DSL Cumulative Errored Seconds: 206 206 0 0:07:14  

DSL Severely Errored Seconds: 123 123 0 0:07:26  

DSL Corrected Blocks: 120062497 120062497 39857 0:00:00  

DSL Uncorrected Blocks: 26923 26923 0 0:07:14

[Pip_2]

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ryanb1281 wrote:

Okay, here are my stats, but they may appear worse than reality since in the past 24 hours, the RG was replaced and then a few hours later the technician identified and fixed a problem in the wiring outside our premises.  Then service was restored.  However, the problem I am discussing happened in several recordings both before and after this issue.

DSL Link Retrains: 10 10 0 13:43:49  

DSL Training Errors: 185 185 0 15:02:07  

DSL Training Timeouts: 2 2 0 16:43:04  

DSL Loss of Framing Failures: 0 0 0 0:00:00  

DSL Loss of Signal Failures: 0 0 0 0:00:00  

DSL Loss of Power Failures: 0 0 0 0:00:00  

DSL Loss of Margin Failures: 5 5 0 16:06:50  

DSL Cumulative Errored Seconds: 206 206 0 0:07:14  

DSL Severely Errored Seconds: 123 123 0 0:07:26  

DSL Corrected Blocks: 120062497 120062497 39857 0:00:00  

DSL Uncorrected Blocks: 26923 26923 0 0:07:14

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Those stats for 24 hours are bad. You need to call them back again. Something is still not right.

185 training errors????? WAY too high as are both the corrected and uncorrected blocks.

Message Edited by Pip on 09-23-2008 10:52 AM

[ryanb1281]

After doing some tests, I have discovered that the freezing/pixelation of the video happens on the live TV signal (and is therefore present on the DVR as well), while the lines across the screen and crackling in the audio is not part of the live TV signal and only appears in the DVR.

Following up on your message, I did contact Tech Support, and when they pulled up my data, they agreed that the numbers looked bad.  The guy said "well, whatever the tech person did yesterday didn't fix much of anything."  Unfortunately, they could only send someone out 3 days from now.  So until then I'll have to live with bad signal for my Internet and TV.  I'll post on here when I learn more about the problem. 

[RCSMG ACE - Master]

Let us know how things go after the tech comes to your house.  And it won't hurt to check and see if they had any cancellations and can possibly send a tech out sooner.

[Pip_2]

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ryanb1281 wrote:

After doing some tests, I have discovered that the freezing/pixelation of the video happens on the live TV signal (and is therefore present on the DVR as well), while the lines across the screen and crackling in the audio is not part of the live TV signal and only appears in the DVR.

Following up on your message, I did contact Tech Support, and when they pulled up my data, they agreed that the numbers looked bad.  The guy said "well, whatever the tech person did yesterday didn't fix much of anything."  Unfortunately, they could only send someone out 3 days from now.  So until then I'll have to live with bad signal for my Internet and TV.  I'll post on here when I learn more about the problem. 

---

Thanks Ryan. We'll be waiting to hear what they found.

[ryanb1281]

This is just an update on the on going problems - so that if someone else has similar problems, hopefully they can get them resolved a lot faster.

We've now had many technicians come out the house.  We've had:

(1) The installer - who thought our line looked great before installing the system

(2) A U-verse tech who came out when our system started crashing who thought the problem was outside and called for line techs that never showed up

(3) Another U-verse tech who swapped our RG, thinking that might be the problem

(4) Another U-verse tech who swapped our port at the node

(5) Line technicians who found 1000 feet of cable running from the house that they were able to lop off (I believe that's called a bridge cap)

(6) Another U-verse tech who thought the problem was a drop line into the house, which required a different technician to come out

(7) A line tech who agreed the problem was outside the home and said he will eventually replace the drop line and add a network box to the outside of the home.  

So we have had at least seven technicians of different kinds out at the house over the past week and we are still without reliable service.  Part of the problem is that the signal errors are intermittent.  So a technician will make a change, wait 10 minutes, see no errors, and claim to have solved the problem.  Unfortunately, the technicians have been proven wrong over and over again.

I will say, however, that just about all the technicians have thus far been extremely friendly.  With any luck, replacing the outside wiring should hopefully resolve the problem, but I'll post another update when I know more. 

Also, over the past 21 hours, our stats show 64 loss of signal failures, 54 DSL training errors, 310 cumulative seconds with severe errors, 687 million corrected blocks, and 96000 uncorrected blocks.

[dannyt_1]

I assume that your telephone lines come in underground?

If they have isolated it to the drop wire then you will continue to have problems until it is replaced.

[RCSMG ACE - Master]

It sounds like either the hard drive in the stb.  But if you are having the problem to some degree overall, then it could be there is a problem with the cables that are running in your house.  I don't know if you posted this or not but do you have a coax or Cat5 installation?  If it is coax you may have connectors that need to be replaced or entire cables replaced.

[ryanb1281]

I don't disagree that the picture problems on the DVR might be related to the HD on the STB, but before we can know that for certain, we first have to resolve the quality issues that we're having with the signal entering the premises.  Once we have a working signal into the house, then I'll be able to see if the DVR issues resolve themselves or whether they are entirely unconnected.

 We have cat5 running into the RG and coax running out of the RG.  The installer replaced all the connectors on the coax when he installed the service, but he kept the original coax cable that we had been using for cable tv.

[randyl]

yep yep u got to get the stats clean  for sure   (basics)

u be correct imho

[ryanb1281]

Finally, it appears that after over two weeks of repairs that the U-Verse techs finally found and solved the problem.  They replaced the drop line running into the house and replaced the cable running from the drop line to the box down the street.  It was a lot of work for them.  It appears that the drop line was the problem.

Compare my stats for the past 32 hours with the stats that I posted earlier:

Link Retrains: 0 0 0 0:00:00

DSL Training Errors: 0 0 0 0:00:00

Training Timeouts: 0 0 0 0:00:00

Loss of Framing Failures: 0 0 0 0:00:00

Loss of Signal Failures: 0 0 0 0:00:00

Loss of Margin Failures: 0 0 0 0:00:00

Cumulative Seconds w/Errors: 2 0 0 13:40:44

Cumulative Sec. w/Severe Errors: 0 0 0 0:00:00

Corrected Blocks: 47665 8107 25 0:09:54

Uncorrectable Blocks: 2 0 0 13:40:44

DSL Unavailable Seconds: 0 0 0 0:00:00

The DVR appears to have improved, but I haven't yet spent enough time monitoring the problem.  So it would seem that the errors in our signal into our home were corrupting the data recorded by the DVR.