QuantumFluxx
@mountaincable.net
|  Mountain has finally gone and lost us as a customer (sorta)
Well after over 10 years of being a mountaincable subscriber for tv, internet, and more recently phone, they've finally convinced us its time to move elsewhere for the TV service.
For the past month anything recorded on our piece of garbage pace dual tuner hd pvr, will playback with audio dropouts all over the place, digital pixelation, lost image entirely, or other random defects. We've called and called, they sent out service technicians, said everything in the house is fine signal-wise, went to check the pole in front of the house and said there was a problem in there with the recieving. Told us they'd fix it within the week. That was 3 weeks ago, and problem still persists, so another technician comes out, tries switching the box to see if maybe the last one was defective, we bring up the pole outside he just arbitrarily says its been fixed, but none of us recall seeing a mountaincable truck out the front window servicing it.
Final straw, was the Fringe finale which 60% of the episode was inaudible, and every 6 seconds the image would freeze for about 2 seconds, then "digitally break" catching up to live feed. FOXHD is particularly terrible with this problem.
So we're switching to Bell satellite for our HD options. Mountain seems to not care much about keeping its customers these days (the old mountaincable from a few years ago would have had this settled). Still keeping them for internet and phone for now, until something better rolls around.
/rant
P.S. Anyone else had problems like this with the garbage Pace PVR? (dont get me started on all the freezing and fast-forward jump-backs it does). |
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MikeG
Premium
join:2004-10-02
Hamilton, ON
 ·Mountain Cable
| I've had some problems with the Motorola DCT, but its more to do with it rather than the service. Sometimes the box freezes up and when it catches up a whole bunch of commands execute all at once, its kind of funny when it happens now cause i just don't care anymore.
They recently pushed out a firmware update, i think it was wednesday night, for the motorola dcts..from 16.35 to 16.57, noticed its been pretty stable, cept last night all the analog channels turned to green/purple, had to go into the box's setup and change the resolution setting to get the correct colors back, it was weird.
Back about 6-7months ago i was getting some pixelation every few minutes on foxhd and i think westnbchd, but it went away after a few weeks. Doesn't sound as bad as yours though, mine was basically
1) whole screen pixelated (1-sec)
2) audio breakup (1-2sec)
3) picture would return (1-2sec)
--
Success is measured by effort |
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Marcer
VIP
join:2007-07-08
Hamilton, ON
·Mountain Cable
| freeze up and green/purple are both known issues related to firmware.
RE: Pixelation/Audio Dropout, I can't speak authoritatively regarding a Pace DCT (kinda glad Cogeco sticks w/ Motorola), but if your Motorola starts acting up I have a few ideas.
In a general sense, I'd have concerns about the box overheating, or just a plain poor design. I'd push for them to swap your Pace unit for a Motorola to see if it corrects the issue, but that's me... |
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QuantumFluxx
@mountaincable.net
| The problem with getting a Motorola, is Mountaincable seem to have phased out the motorola's. We've had 3 replacements, all Pace.
Tonight we had further problems, shows that were set to record, didn't record, which isn't itself anything new, but when trying to hit record, the box wouldn't record. We had to fight with it to get it to finally record. Now the show that was on after it, was also supposed to record, but it didn't show up in our list despite supposedly recording, so we rewound the channel from live and the title changed to "To be announced...", the bar was a solid red with no indicator as to the position, and there was a second bar of solid blue on the bottom, with the rewind symbols on the far left side, and the blue bar went from one end of the screen to the other.
Absolute garbage. I can't stress how downhill these boxes have become over the past few months, and this was a brand new box that MC claimed wasn't a returned/refurbished box.
Half the joy of switching to Bell, their PVR's aren't seemingly made by some amateur programmer in his mothers basement. The firmware that cable companies use is absolute garbage. Hell, I'd buy TiVo if mountaincable supported it. |
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Marcer
VIP
join:2007-07-08
Hamilton, ON | Personally, if I was in your shoes, I'd be at the office on Hester demanding a Moto box, or they can come out and shut off my TV service. Additionally, I'd be demanding a refund on the rental you've paid and not been able to use. |
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siouxie
I've got the Steel City Blues
join:2005-08-18
Ontario
clubs:
 ·Bell Sympatico
·Mountain Cable
| reply to QuantumFluxx
We have been suffering from frozen screen, intermittant loss of sound etc for the past week with our standard digital box.. no apparent reason and it is haphazard - not the same channel or time or program, although it does seem to happen more frequently on BBC Canada. |
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QuantumFluxx
@mountaincable.net
| Well we made the switch, Bell works much better. Picture quality is pretty comparable, and the boxes are a breath of fresh air, so fast with no problems, audio dropouts and freezing are no longer an issue. Taking the MC boxes back and cancelling tomorrow. |
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bigslick1979
join:2009-02-04
| Just following up to see how the Bell PVR has been? Lucky for me I have had only minor issues with the Motorola 6416 but I know people with Cogeco and they're far worse off then anyone from Mountaincable. I find older recordings will freeze more so then new record ones but I personally have had issues with Bell in the past so it would be a tough switch for me. |
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quantumfluxx
join:2009-01-11
| Believe me, we've had problems with bell in the past (home phone and cell phone side of things), and I can honestly say I wish we had switched to Bell ExpressVU earlier. The boxes after over a month have still not shown the slightest of problems. Things work as they should, theres no audio drop outs, theres no lagging or freezing of the box, theres no errors about recording space left (MC boxes used to tell me 100% full with only 2 hours on it sometimes). Nothing but happy with Bell's PVR's. They sure suck when it comes to home phone, cell phone, and general customer service, but their TV service is surprisingly robust. |
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bigslick1979
join:2009-02-04
| I had issues with TSN of all channels giving me transponder errors. It happened when I got a router in my house back in 2002. The over the phone tech said "there you go" I was shocked to hear him said that and told him now I cant watch sports on TSN because silly me I bought a router and a laptop? His answer was "yep" I called them and told them I was cancelling and was charged another fully month. So I switched my phone from them too. I doubt I will ever go back. Had Mountain for all 3 services since 2002 and only once had minor pixelation on a few channels which was fixed the next day when a tech came here. Another time I wasnt able to order PPV from the box and that was fixed too with a service call. 2 service calls in 7 years is quite good in my eyes.
Good luck with the PVR from Bell but it sounds good so far. I guess we all know that Bell didnt make it so it should be good LOL |
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