Mentor
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51 Messages
Confirmed: vip2250 fixes surround sound audio dropouts!
I had a vip1225 hooked up via HDMI to an Onkyo receiver (HT-S8400 to be specific) and I had problems with audio dropouts on surround. Every few seconds, for a fraction of a second, the audio would drop. It drove me nuts and I tried everything to fix it.. I tried different (new) HDMI cables, and even a different home theater system! In the end, I had to keep it on stereo.
I went over and over this with UVerse support. They kept wanting to send me to the paid support line for help configuring my home theater system and out of four techs I spoke to, none ackowledged hearing anything about audio dropouts over HDMI with surround. In fact, they kept insisting that I plug the HDMI straight to the TV and I kept having to explain my TV is a stereo device, not a surround device so it's not a good test. They also immediately started jumping on the bandwagen saying surround sound is out of scope. I saw a couple of posts about the vip2250 fixing this issue but none of the techs would entertain that idea.
Finally I pled my case to a very nice agent in billing who had to go WAY out of her way to get me a vip2250. Hooked it up and sure enough all audio dropout problems are resolved!
subtle
Voyager
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6 Messages
11 years ago
Thank you very much for your post infinity1976.
I thought I was losing my mind over the past two days after the installation of the VIP2250 box. I have been having occasional issues over the years with my VIP1225 having random black screens and also an issue with On Demand generating a cycle of pauses while watching films. After a handful of phone calls to technical support over the past year I was finally sent to someone in Tier 2 that approved a free upgrade to the 2250 this past Monday evening.
Tuesday the guy shows up and installs the 2250. He suggested at the time eliminating the coaxial from our equation by running a short line to the master bedroom and connecting the modem directly to the main DVR via ethernet. Then we installed wireless hubs on the other two televisions. When I saw the added hard drive space I was excited, but my pleasure quickly dissipated that evening while watching my usual evening shows.
The black levels of the 2250 are absolutely horrible. There were no variations or gradients of black in dark scenes. Literally only a solid black mass. Skin color was also a major issue. White skin now seemed to either have a orange or red hue to it. I couldn't generate a normal skin tone regardless of how much I attempted to tweak the settings on my Panasonic Plasma.
Needless to say I called the next morning and scheduled an appointment to have the 2250, along with the wireless hubs, removed from the house. The tech came this afternoon and a brand new 1225 was installed and I can confirm that all is right with the world.
Thanks again infinity1976. If I hadn't come across your post I probably would have ended up convincing myself that I was seeing things.
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SomeJoe7777
Expert
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9.4K Messages
11 years ago
They messed up pretty much everything, didn't they?
Hope it can be fixed in firmware, although prepare for it to take a while. The 1200 series had the same clipping black level problem early on in U-Verse's existence, and it took nearly 2 years before a firmware update was issued that fixed the problem.
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anoldpunk
Tutor
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2 Messages
10 years ago
Confirmed: The VIP2250 also fixed my Dolby 2.0 audio dropout issue with my new Onkyo TX-NR727. Was driving me crazy. Thank you for this thread!
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hfeiges
Tutor
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8 Messages
10 years ago
Hello,
I upgraded my onkyo reciever to a new onkyo receiver, and have this exact same problem (audio drop-outs on the 2.0 material)...
Strangely enough, this was not a problem with my old Onkyo reciever. It was about a 6 or 7 year old 7.1 reciever but it did not have HDMI or network capability or any of the new features... When attached to digtial sound over the optical, I did not experience drop-outs but I imagine that this was just due to its handling of the errors from the box better...
Anyhow, I am about to run the gauntlet of AT&T support to try to get a new box... I am not interested in paying $100 or whatever for the privledge of getting a box that works... Does anyone have any advice about how to go about obtaining a new box from AT&T support without having to spend hours and hours on the phone hunting around for the right tech?? Perhaps there are some key phrases I should be using or maybe I should be contacting an entirely different place?
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Agent 305
Teacher
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15 Messages
10 years ago
Which AT&T set top box are you using? What digital audio output setting are you using? Stereo or Surround?
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anoldpunk
Tutor
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2 Messages
10 years ago
@hfeiges -- I was crossing my fingers that the swap from the VIP1225 to the VIP2250 was going to work; otherwise, the tech likely would've had to charge a service call fee, placing the blame on my home theater setup. Of course, the new box solved the issue and there was no charge at all (I've had the U300 plan for years--may have been a factor on the no charge).
As for how I worded things--on the initial call to AT&T, I just said my box was momentarily dropping audio sporadically. They did the scripted attempt to restart my box and "do some checks" while placing me on hold. I ensured I had the box set to a suspect channel while they were doing the tests (KERA public TV channel in my case, which plays about everything in 2.0 on U-Verse). I told them still no good, and they scheduled a tech to come out. I didn’t bother to get into any further technical detail regarding the issue at that time, i.e., didn't waste time with attempts to speak with Level 2 tech, didn't mention a box swap might be needed, etc.
Once the tech was 30 minutes from my house, he called to make sure I was home. I then asked if he had a VIP2250 in his van and let him know I believe I pinpointed the issue. He replied yes. Once he showed up, I demoed the worst channel possible (again, KERA) for him. It was skipping audio terribly and he noted it after checking the signal and looking for updates. He swapped the box, set the new box to surround audio (boxes come default with audio set to stereo), and presto--it worked beautifully. No more dropouts.
The tech was actually very receptive to learning something new and graciously thanked me for doing the research and minimizing his troubleshooting time. Hopefully you have a similarly pleasant experience.
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hfeiges
Tutor
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8 Messages
10 years ago
The box I had was a VIP 1216...
Basically it was exhibiting the behavior as discussed in this thread.. The box is set up for surround sound, and it is hooked up through an Onkyo audio receiver via the HDMI cable (when I switched to an optical cable for digital sound, it exhibited the same behavior)...
When displaying a channel with a dolby digital audio source, everything worked just fine, and the surround sound came through and there were no glitches.. When changing to a channel with 2.0 channel audio, there would be frequent but random audio drop-outs lasting about a tenth of a second. Sometimes it would be very frequent (once or twice a second), sometimes it would only happen a few times a minute, but it was random and persistent and quite annoying (it could not be ignored)..
My reciever has a mode on it where it displays the audio and video input and output specs... When watching a 2.0 audio channel, it would show 2.0 channel input, and 2.1 channel output, but when these drop-outs would occurr, it would display "unknown" for the audio input for a brief second, and then go back to showing 2.0 channel audio.
2 days and 2 box swaps later (I will post more about my experience with AT&T support in a little bit) I now have a VIP 2250, and as this thread suggests, it makes the audio drop out problem go away..
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hfeiges
Tutor
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8 Messages
10 years ago
Anyhow, my experience getting this box (a VIP 1216) swapped out was mostly good, but not perfect.. When I called tech support on Thursday morning, after giving them my information I simply told the tech something like the following:
“I researched this problem myself, and it is a very common problem that is well documented on many support forums, including the AT&T forums. I can direct you towards some of these forum threads if you like. I know what the problem is, and I know what the solution is, and if it’s all the same to you, I think it would be just great if we can skip past all the rig-a-ma-roll and go right to the solution instead, and save both of us a lot of time”…
To my astonishment, the tech agreed with me, and skipped past all the troubleshooting steps and just agreed to send me out a new box. I guess they can mail them out now and you can swap the box yourself, which is just fine by me. He sounded grateful that I researched the problem myself. I made it clear I needed a “new model” box in order to solve the problem (and I am reasonably sure I told him I needed a “VIP 2250 or a Cisco equivalent”, which was confirmed by the AT&T tech the next day, more on this later). I told him that if they send me out the same model box it would just be a waste of time and shipping. He told me that he put it in the notes that I needed a new model box, etc.
I didn’t realize that they send it out FedEx overnight, so amazingly I found the shipment dropped at my door on Friday, which was the very next day (wow!). I was quite happy about that.
When I opened the box, sadly I found a VIP 1225 inside. Feeling a little bit frustrated, I swapped the box myself (only took a few minutes) and of course I had the same exact problem with the drop-outs (as I was expecting I guess).
So I called tech support again Friday night, and asked him to review the order for the box replacement and to review the notes. The tech agreed that I mentioned the new model box when asking for the replacement. He said that they don’t have a way of specifying which model to replace with, but instead they can just put that in the notes. Sadly, it seems that the shipping department doesn’t read the notes (what a pity). I mentioned that since the shipping department doesn’t read the notes, perhaps it would be best to just send a tech out to do the box swap so I can make sure that I get the right model. Amazingly, he was able to schedule a tech visit the very next morning (Saturday morning). The tech warned me that depending on what the technician does, there is the possibility that I could be charged for the service call (but I would have to accept the charges before services are rendered). I told the tech that under no circumstances would I accept any charges, and he should go ahead and put that in the notes. I said that I would just as soon have AT&T ship the boxes back and forth and keep swapping them out forever and ever until I get the right model box before I would accept any charges. I think the tech found that statement entertaining.
The next morning, as scheduled, the tech showed up and he did have a VIP 2250 in his truck.
For some reason, he wanted to see my residential gateway unit (RG). When he looked at the RG, he was not happy that one of my boxes was hooked up via the coax/HPNA through a splitter (not the DVR box which I was trying to swap). I told him that the box was working just fine, and I just didn’t have a cat-5 cable going to that room, so I was using HPNA for that one. He removed the splitter and went into the room and tested the connection. He spent about a half hour on testing the coax connection to the other room. I kept saying that that particular box was not giving me any problems, but he kept trying to test that connection anyhow (and apparently his testing wasn’t working). Finally he gave up on testing the coax and went back to swapping my box out. All of that coax stuff wasted about a half an hour or so.
Before he swapped the box he attempted to charge me (are these guys paid on commission based on what they charge on service calls?). He said something like “You are aware of the charges for this, right?”. I put on my best angry face (you know the one where one eyebrow raises higher than the other) and said something like “There are not supposed to be any charges on this service call”. I was fully prepared to ask him to leave at that point. He backed out by saying something like “Yes this is a defective box replacement, so wouldn’t be charges for that”. I was a little irked by that, but he continued on.
Anyhow, he replaced the box, and when it was up and running we changed the settings to high definition (I have a 720p plasma TV, but they insist on 1080i, so we set it up as 1080i), and I changed the sound to surround. Once it was set up, I went to the channels that were causing problems and they worked without any dropouts whatsoever (except for the brief moments during a channel change, which is to be expected).
As he was leaving I asked him why I was not allowed to have a splitter on the co-ax, and he said that it wasn’t one of “their” splitters. So I asked him if I could have one of “their” splitters, and he gave me one, and then he left.
So, like I said, for the most part I think that the service experience was pretty good. I brought this problem to their attention on Thursday morning, and it was solved by Saturday morning. I think it can’t get much better than that. Of course it would have been better for everyone involved if I were just shipped the appropriate box in the first place, but a technician was able to bring one out the next day. And then there was that cheap attempt by the technician to charge me for the service call. Other than those two things, I think I didn’t have any problem getting my box swapped out.
Anyhow, sorry for writing a short novel here (maybe you found it good reading?). I hope that this helps someone else someday that has to deal with this, so I guess I was a little verbose.
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Agent 305
Teacher
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15 Messages
10 years ago
Glad to hear that the audio dropout problem went away when you swapped boxes and got the VIP2250. That was my result as well. I did have a different experience using a Toslink Optical Digital Audio cord though. I was able to use the Toslink Optical Digital Audio cord as a work around for the audio dropout problem. I only experienced the audio dropout problem using a HDMI cord for my audio to my receiver. Once I swapped box to VIP2250 using the same HDMI cord to my receiver there were no further audio drop outs.
With regard to charges for swapping out set top box, I will post my comments back to employee further down this thread.
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Agent 305
Teacher
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15 Messages
10 years ago
Billable charges need to be applied properly on a case by case basis. No one expects you to violate company policy and give away set top box upgrades. Charges do apply for set top box changes for personal preference whether that be cosmetic or feature driven.
However the above case involves maintenance reasons not personal preferences and as such no service charge applies. If you are suspended for changing out a set top box to another type for maintenance reasons, you should be filing a grievance with your union steward.
The customer in this audio drop out case is paying for service that he is not receiving from AT&T and should not be billed for any necessary repair required to restore service that he is already being billed for.
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