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opieant
join:2010-07-13

opieant to sbernstein5

Member

to sbernstein5

Re: [HD] Very bad picture dropouts on the HBO/MAX/SHO multiplexe

sbernstein5: Thanks for your update. Please just don't confuse yourself or others by agreeing to a baseless suggestion that sunspots were the problem when they weren't.

I already stated that Verizon is aware of the problem and that it is originating from SHE 1 according to Verizon. As usual, they don't seem to know how to fix the problem. At least for VHO 6, service was switched away from SHE 1 (again) in the early AM hours on 8/1 so that service wasn't a complete mess yesterday. It's nice that they can work around this particular problem by switching away from SHE 1, but they don't seem to know or care that things are broken again whenever the VHOs start using SHE 1 again. As a result, customers were pointlessly inconvenienced for over a week until this latest switch away from SHE 1 eventually took place.

Among other things, I've done side-by-side tests comparing FiOS TV with Dish Network and DIRECTV and in two years I've seen a handful of interruptions originate from each of the satellite providers while many thousands of interruptions have originated from Verizon. There have only been a few days in the past year that FiOS TV wasn't interrupted at all. Only once did I come across an interruption in the satellite feed so that multiple providers experienced the same problem at the same time, and that interruption was for less than a second.

Some details on my earliest experiences with how unreliable FiOS TV is are in another thread from 2010: »Random Freezing, Audio Loss, and Pixelation from VHO 6. The situation has become worse since then so that the plot of interruption time points is almost always a solid line. As the service became worse, it became impractical for me to continuously monitor the service's integrity (which Verizon is supposed to be doing, but apparently their systems are so bad that they fail to detect most problems I report to them until their employees manually confirm the existence of the problems by watching problematic channels like any customer would).

Verizon has never fixed any of the problems I've found and reported to them even after they verified that the problems exist. Some have been national problems (with SHEs), some have been issues with VHO 6, but in all cases the problem does not get fixed. Problems sometimes temporarily go away when Verizon switches between various existing resources, but once a new problem is introduced it never goes away and just gets added to their previous mix of problems.
kes601
join:2007-04-14
Virginia Beach, VA

kes601

Member

I was with you until this statement:
quote:
many thousands of interruptions have originated from Verizon.
Really? That would be several every day. You really had time to monitor 3 services enough every day to see thousands of interruptions?
opieant
join:2010-07-13

opieant

Member

kes601: Yes, it would be several every day, and it almost always is at least that much.

Not all three services have been monitored continuously at all times. That wouldn't be practical for me, nor would it be necessary. Initially I monitored DIRECTV and FiOS TV side by side since we were switching over to FiOS TV but didn't terminate our DIRECTV service for a couple of months. Once I noticed the FiOS TV interruptions and that they weren't going away I set up a tuner and some software on the computer so I could easily determine when FiOS TV interruptions were taking place. Then, at each time a FiOS TV interruption occurred I checked recordings to see if the same problem happened with DIRECTV. Every time the problem was only on FiOS TV.

Examining the FiOS TV interruptions on the computer quickly confirmed my suspicions that Verizon was creating the interruptions. I reported the problem and figured it would be fixed within a few weeks. Tech after tech came out to the house and had no idea what I was talking about when I tried to explain how I had proven the problem was at least as far up the line as the VHO and that they were wasting time and money coming out instead of reporting the problem up to the people responsible for it. I tried to put pressure on them to do the right thing, but I was eventually told off by an irritable, clueless high-level tech support rep who called me after the final field tech came out.

So, I continued to log FiOS TV interruptions 24 hours a day, and occasionally turned Dish Network service on and off to do further side-by-side comparisons. The largest comparison between Dish Network and FiOS was an entire month of nearly continuous monitoring/logging. I think there were around 150-200 FiOS TV interruptions and one lonely Dish Network interruption which turned out to be the problem in the satellite feed that I mentioned in the other post.

Thoroughly fed up, I reported Verizon to the local regulators. They contacted Verizon and Verizon put me in touch with someone who was supposed to be able to help. That was a year ago now, and I've been fed all kinds of nonsense since then about why they've failed to fix every single problem I've reported including the problems they've verified exist. Now they're almost completely ignoring me when their problems are becoming worse than ever. They need help, but they refuse to accept it when it's offered.

I've become rather familiar with the types of interruptions Verizon introduces in the FiOS TV service, so nearly all of the interruptions can be identified as being caused by Verizon without any comparison to another service being necessary any longer.