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noping
no route to host
Premium
join:2007-01-09
 ·Verizon FIOS
| HBO VOD pixeling/tiling, again
Previously. (full thread)
Now, not only am I seeing the "white tiling" described in the aforementioned thread, I'm also noticing that the audio is randomly dropping out (again) and minor "glitching" in the middle of the screen (not white blocks). If I rewind the title and resume playback, the problem disappears (but occurs elsewhere later on).
I have tried (or had):
1. »Three »ONTs replaced
2. One »SD-STB replaced
3. Signal of coax repeatedly checked by technicians ("good")
4. Using the Actiontec (firewall off, cat5e to WAN + coax to Actiontec), using a WRT54Gv2 (Tomato 1.06) + NIM100
Coincidentally (or more likely to be »totally irrelevant), I'm noticing problems more often when there is bad weather. | |
KA3SGM
- -... ...- -
Premium
join:2006-01-17
West Chester, PA
clubs:
 ·Cricket Broadband
·Verizon FIOS
| noping, you are using the Actiontec, the Linksys, AND A NIM???
I don't understand why HBO-VOD is the only channel freezing up, but if you are forwarding the Actiontec to the Linksys w/ a NIM, you are probably loosing any QOS (Quality of Service) for the VOD, that the Actiontec provides.
Try a load test on the whole setup. Open up a separate VOD stream on each box simultaneously. Try 2, 3, ..., however many boxes you have, and see if the problem gets worse. Test your Internet connection speed while doing this.
I can get 3 VOD streams running at the same time, before the Internet connection becomes affected. The 4th stream pulls the Internet down to about 12Mbit. The Internet slows down, but the video goes unaffected. This is with a 612 ONT, connected to the Actiontec via Cat5, with no other routers, NIM's or VOIP adapters in the loop.
It would be interesting to see if you experience any connection problems, freezing, or slowdowns, while trying this experiment. You might be able to fish out what is the offending piece of hardware, even if that is a bad PON card at the CO, or a Verizon video server problem.
Sorry, I don't have HBO to try it myself, I took the Showtime, Starz, Movie Channel, route, and have never experienced problems like you are having. | |
noping
no route to host
Premium
join:2007-01-09
·Verizon FIOS
4 edits | My bad, I should have phrased that better.
Configurations I have tried:
1. ONT --(cat5)--> Actiontec WAN; ONT --(coax)--> splitter --(coax)--> Actiontec
2. ONT --(cat5)--> WRT54G WAN; ONT --(coax)--> splitter --(coax)--> NIM100 <--(cat5)-- WRT54G LAN
Configurations where "glitching" does not occur:
None
It (tiling, glitching) happens at random points regardless of how many VOD streams I have open (maximum of two); no better, no worse. Internet speed is not affected at all. What confuses me is that the problem is (as far as I can tell) limited to just HBO, free VOD is fine. | |
KA3SGM
- -... ...- -
Premium
join:2006-01-17
West Chester, PA
clubs:
·Cricket Broadband
·Verizon FIOS
| If it's only HBO, and absolutely, positively, never happening with Non-HBO VOD, I am completely lost. The only difference between your account, and one with basic VOD selections, is the HBO VOD option is toggled on.
It almost sounds like just having HBO has fouled up your account provisioning.
Whatever they change on an account when you subscribe to a premium channel, that enables the "Premium Channel" option on the VOD server, might be corrupt.(????)
The same way as if I try to watch HBO VOD without being an HBO subscriber, and I get blocked out with an error screen that says I must subscribe to HBO to view the content.
Could your account be somewhere in between, with HBO-VOD not fully enabled, but at the same time, not fully disabled.
They would probably charge you to do it, but it would be interesting to see what would happen if you completely canceled HBO, wait a day, then re-subscribed to HBO again, and see if that fixes the problem.
Sort of the way a PC optimizer program would clean out bugs in the Windows Registry, maybe it would clean out any errors in your FiOS account, and start with a clean slate.
I had that work for me back in February, but my account corruption was with the Internet service, not the TV.
I had no Internet access at all, and had TV with no guide or VOD. 3 ONT's, 3 Actiontec's, no help. They actually canceled the whole FiOS account, created a new one, and the problem was solved. It just took them a month to figure out how to do that.
I only offer that suggestion because I have seen my own account corrupted, and know that it can happen, and I also went through the repeated replacement of hardware, with all of it making absolutely no difference at all.
Don't know if you can find a close neighbor with FiOS, and HBO, and see if they have a similar problem, but it sounds like they have checked and replaced everything, and no matter what Verizon says, it IS a Network Issue. | |
noping
no route to host
Premium
join:2007-01-09
·Verizon FIOS
3 edits | reply to noping
Update:
The problem has gotten worse. VOD is once again "unwatchable"; the audio will drop out from time to time, "white tiling" and choppiness in the image appear more frequently than before.
Calls to the FSC result in the same responses each time - either "we'll forward this to a NT and have them call you back" (they don't) or "we're going to send out a tech to take another look" (a waste of my time - they've already replaced everything that could possibly be causing a problem here!)
Really, really, really do not want to deal with this crap right now. If I could find a corporate address to write to, I would - I'm now locked into a two year contract and I can't back out at this point. | |
KA3SGM
- -... ...- -
Premium
join:2006-01-17
West Chester, PA
clubs:
·Cricket Broadband
·Verizon FIOS
| Noping, I would unbolt my own ONT, bring a spool of RG6QS and a pile of shielded Cat6 over to your place, and rewire everything, to "experiment with anything that could be causing this", but even if we pinpointed the problem, Verizon would not buy into it, and continue to try everything else, swearing it was a problem at your home! It does not matter how many other customers in the area report the same problem!!! | |
noping
no route to host
Premium
join:2007-01-09 | reply to noping
Still looking for a solution, any suggestions - I'll try just about anything at this point, since nobody at the FSC seems to want to do anything about this. | |
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