MetroCast issues, especially in afternoons

[stgislander]

I was out of town last week so I was binge watching the shows I recorded. I found it very interesting that the signal magically cleared up when the commercials started. Not once did I see a recorded commercial effected.

[SamSpade]

Maybe this is related to bandwidth issues, but does anyone else notice that the quality of the Metrocast TV signal drops around 8:00pm? The picture goes "blocky" and the audio breaks and skips. We notice it with network channels 4->9 (704->709). We thought it was just the HD channels, but it's on the non-HD channels as well. Fortunately, it usually clears up as the evening wears on.

We've been noticing it for quite some time now. If it keeps getting worse, there's no need to keep the TV part of the cable, because TV that is unwatchable is the same as no TV at all.

And it's not just the TV reception - for some reason there's been this recurring problem with the DVRs where it responds VERY slowly to any remote command - like pressing pause and waiting 15-20 seconds - or longer - for it to get around to doing it.
Changing channels or bringing up the guide - and waiting as long as half a minute for it to respond.

Now we got an automated call saying TV would be down in the early morning for maintenance. Maybe that will clear it up.

[Clem72]

And it's not just the TV reception - for some reason there's been this recurring problem with the DVRs where it responds VERY slowly to any remote command - like pressing pause and waiting 15-20 seconds - or longer - for it to get around to doing it.
Changing channels or bringing up the guide - and waiting as long as half a minute for it to respond.

Did you try turning it off and on again? :)

Usually in a set top box this is one of two issues, memory leaks over time causing you to not have enough free memory to run the program which then causes it to swap memory to the permanent storage which can be very slow. This would be "fixed" by a power cycle, but would eventually come back.

Another issue is that these DVR boxes often have two partitions (or even three for transparent/instant OS upgrades). The system partition and the media partition. An issue comes up when items are cached to the system partition (thumbnails, guide data, LOGS, etc.) and it gets very near to full. Instead of intelligently clearing out the old data at 3am or something, it often just clears old space as a request comes in for new. This would cause considerable delays in bringing up the guide, but shouldn't affect pausing or other remote commands. This issue is usually resolved by a factory reset.

[stgislander]

I had to perform a reboot of my DVR box this past weekend when it stopped responding to the remote. And I have to add a correction from my last post... I did see commercials being affected last night. It was so bad last night, the end of Lucifer on Fox was almost unwatchable.

I was thinking about taking my DVR back to MetroCast and getting a new one.

[SamSpade]

Did you try turning it off and on again? :)

I did that with one of them. One of the others, it appears to fix it, but then it messes up again in a few days, leaving me to believe that it's not really being fixed.

We did have Metrocast come out - my wife wanted them to replace the box - but the guy ran a few diagnostics, replaced a cable or two that he said wasn't good - and said otherwise, the diagnostics said it wasn't any different from any other box.

I mean, it reminded me of an old doctor's office comic strip that went - "Your HMO won't pay us another dime, so I guess you're cured". It was clear enough it was still having problems.

I would LIKE to just cut the cord, but there's just something about surfing channels. With streaming services, you do pretty much have to know ahead of time, because not a single one of them has an interface you'd want to browse with for more than a minute.

[koan00]

Do some speed tests and call tech support? Every 1-2 years some part of the infrastructure seems to start failing. Takes a couple of visits but eventually they fix it.

[glhs837]

Speed is fine. Issue, which if it was in an individual DVR wouldn't explain why we have three or four people with the identical issue, is this scramble of the broadcast channel signals during prime time. Lets see where everyone is, down between Cooks and St Mary's College here.

[Clem72]

Speed is fine. Issue, which if it was in an individual DVR wouldn't explain why we have three or four people with the identical issue, is this scramble of the broadcast channel signals during prime time. Lets see where everyone is, down between Cooks and St Mary's College here.

Could be noise on the line caused by faulty equipment, or mis-installation (like someone plugging a directv line into their cable switch, which wouldn't normally cause an issue but they also use the DTV MOCA/DECA network adapter that does step all over cable company freqs). Could even be a damaged cable on the pole that fails intermittently when the wind blows or the temperature changes.

One thing I wouldn't do is take their "tech's" word as gospel. I have had a tech tell me that I needed to replace my modem because it was putting out signals that could interfere with air traffic control. It actually takes some thinking to figure out just how fully that tech misunderstands his job. He didn't even consider rf coupling, impedance mismatches, signal refraction from a crimp, etc. Nope, it had to be that the modem was generating a signal that is outside of the frequency that it is capable of, and that it almost certainly would filter, and somehow that signal inside of their shielded coax was going to overpower the ATC signal to aircraft.

[stgislander]

Speed is fine. Issue, which if it was in an individual DVR wouldn't explain why we have three or four people with the identical issue, is this scramble of the broadcast channel signals during prime time. Lets see where everyone is, down between Cooks and St Mary's College here.

East Tall Timbers here.

A tech came to my house two months ago when I was having internet issues and replaced every coax splitter and connector for where their coax meets my house to the cable/phone modem. I've not had an internet problem since, and the scrambling was happening before then.