NTL Upgrade Work

eleMental

Just incase (like me) you didnt get any letter from them, the NTL guy I met this morning told me they're carrying out upgrade works on the line in the Grove/Park this and next week and so there may not be any telly or intermittant problems with the telly during the day.

LEIN

He didn't happen to tell you what type of upgrade works he was carrying out did he?

eleMental

He said that they were upgrading it for broadband as far as I remember.

Interestingly after I made the post I did infact get a letter from NTL.....but not to advise me of the 2 weeks disruption, it was addressed to "The Resident" and was simply to advertise how NTL are cheaper than Sky (even though I'm already with NTL!)

Glad to see the money I pay them every 2 months is funnelled back into totally unnecessary marketing rather than keeping existing customers advised of disruption to their service LOL!

LEIN

I thought their BB was already available on that side.

Get those flyer's all the time. Sometimes it arrives same day as the bill. :rolleyes:

FVC

FYI - For the TV, they are now offering the full cable connection rather than the current MMDS - we are switching over tomorrow - hopefully a better picture quality, less freezing of screen and a few extra channels

Charlie-Bravo

I had a technician out not so long ago about the 'full' cable service. He said the system was a hybrid and that we still only get MMDS.

I'd be interested to hear about your visit tomorrow FVC!

ciaran67

eleMental wrote: »

Just incase (like me) you didnt get any letter from them, the NTL guy I met this morning told me they're carrying out upgrade works on the line in the Grove/Park this and next week and so there may not be any telly or intermittant problems with the telly during the day.

If he interrupts the Ashes from Friday you might hear some bad language in the park!

JanneG

ciaran67 wrote: »

If he interrupts the Ashes from Friday you might hear some bad language in the park!

That upgrade work happened in April

LEIN

FVC wrote: »

FYI - For the TV, they are now offering the full cable connection rather than the current MMDS - we are switching over tomorrow - hopefully a better picture quality, less freezing of screen and a few extra channels

How did you get on?

Do you have a better channel line up now?

ciaran67

Damo9090 wrote: »

How did you get on?

Do you have a better channel line up now?

Ive gone over to Sky. More channels and cheaper than NTL. Saving 8 euro a month.

Charlie-Bravo

Right, I went and ordered a DVR today. Hopefully that'll keep the missus happy when I tell her she can't watch a programme when a programme I want to watch is on.

During my call to UPC, I asked what channels were available to us - just to humour the poor girl on the other ends of the phone! So, they think we are on a 'full' cable service here in Charlesland and she offered to quickly run through what channels I should be getting and lo and behold...they hadn't a clue we are still on MMDS.

If we did have the full service we would get channels like Sci-Fi Channel, Alibi, fashionTV, lots of Discovery channels, and all national geographic channels. Here's list of the potential channels available on UPC

So I think I've figured it out: When they upgraded Charlesland for phone and broadband, their system in UPC thinks that if we have Phone and Broadband availability, then we must be recieving a fully cabled service (and all the channels that go with it). But as it is a hybrid system, with an MMDS receiving dish in Charlesland, we only get so many channels. Essentially MMDS is limited. Don't think for a second that you'll ever get HD on MMDS - there's no space for it.

FVC

It's defo the real cable connection. When the technician came out he said that he thought that it was still the hybrid version. I insisted that it was available so he phoned UPC who confirmed that the cable connection was available. He then had to change all the connection boxes in the house to another type.

Defo a slight improvement in the picture quality but a word of warning - if u have a DVR box, it needs to be changed so we have lost all our recorded programmes over the past year.

I also switched to the phone and broadband. I'm having some teething problems with the broadband connection so I haven't checked if we have received any extra tv channels yet.

UPC also confirmed that the DVR HD+ box will be made available to us - no timeframe yet.

Charlie-Bravo

Hi FVC. I got my self install DVR tonight couriered to the door by Cyclone.

I'm having problems self installing as the activation code seems to be wrong. Any idea what the activation code is? On the letter from UPC it says '131' but it doesn't pick up anything. I tried 132, and the signal strength goes up to 100% but still it doesnt find any channels.

Were you watching what the technician was doing? Did he enter just a three digit code and bobs your uncle?


On HD, the current MMDS runs on a QAM64 - not sure what it means exactly but if you want HD, the MMDS service will need to be ungraded to a QAM256 - This will create enough space for HD content. But it might be a while before they do a further upgrade for Charlesland.

FVC

I wasn't around when the technician was here. If we had an issue in the past, I phoned upc and they linked into the box from their side and sorted it out.

We have a full cable connection now (not mmds) so it's probably just a matter of time before they roll out the HD+ to Charlesland. You would need to contact them to convert.

Charlie-Bravo

Ok, no probs and thanks for the response...will give them a tinkle in the morning. Have to say, the DVR is a dinky little looking box!

LEIN

Hi astro.

The cable and mmds forum might throw up some useful answers for you. Some knowledgeable heads over there.

Charlie-Bravo

Thanks Damo and yes, I picked up on this thread in the last hour. No mention of Wicklow or Greystones. The only thing of note is that I do get a signal quality bar of 100% on activation code '132' and not 131 as the instructions stated. perhaps another error on UPC's part because of this confusion over whether we are Cable or MMDS.

Anyways, I think I'll just wait till the morning....I don;t think this will be the last time a self installed will be done in Greystones so I'll post back the info I acquire from the TV lords.

*****
edit: I restarted the box last night and just typed in the '132' code...everything works fine. Still no extra channels though. Nice slick box!