Glitching, Pixelating, Freezing to the Point of Unwatchable Television

[chiques]

I have a situation where my television pixelates and freezes excessively only on certain channels. There are some channels such as HBO and Cinemax in HD which are so bad I don't even watch them. 

Here is a quick youtube video of what I'm seeing. I've already checked removed and re-tightened all the coax connectors and have been with tech support a few times where they do a bunch of time consuming diagnostics (which i would think should be a bit more automated being the technological advancement of this product). 

Here is a quick Youtube video of what I see. In this case it was occurring on a major broadcast HD channel (NBC) I beleive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKR62J7TH1A

Does anyone have any suggestions on what I could try?

[22Becca22]

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@chiques wrote:

I have a situation where my television pixelates and freezes excessively only on certain channels. There are some channels such as HBO and Cinemax in HD which are so bad I don't even watch them. 

Here is a quick youtube video of what I'm seeing. I've already checked removed and re-tightened all the coax connectors and have been with tech support a few times where they do a bunch of time consuming diagnostics (which i would think should be a bit more automated being the technological advancement of this product). 

Here is a quick Youtube video of what I see. In this case it was occurring on a major broadcast HD channel (NBC) I beleive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKR62J7TH1A

Does anyone have any suggestions on what I could try?

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Hello,

Is this issue confined to just one set top box?

Here are some troubleshooting steps you can try on your own for the problematic STB.

From your FiOS TV remote, go to:

Menu -- Customer Support -- In Home Agent -- Reboot STB

Menu -- Customer Support -- In Home Agent -- Set Top Box Auto-Correction

Menu -- Customer Support -- Self Diagnostics - Start  (check that everything looks OK and Successful).

If all else fails, contact Verizon's Technical Support once more at 1-888-553-1555.

Also, if you have questions on your account or need to switch out the set-top box and there is a Verizon FiOS store in your area, then they can help you.

For technical-related matters, though, they'll connect you right through to Technical Support.

Here is a list of Verizon FiOS stores:

http://www22.verizon.com/Support/Residential/tv/fiostv/General+Support/Account+Issues/QuestionsOne/8...

[Schlomo]

I had the same issue, particularly with OnDemand on particular channels. Took several visits from Verizon before they FINALLY replaced the box, which fixed the problem.

Make noisy complaints until they swap out your cable box-that should fix it.

[chiques]

Everything seems to be linked to my main box with is my HD box.

[chiques]

I went ahead and unplugged, unscrewed the coax, re-screwed it and rebooted. I'll post an update if this occurs again.

[chiques]

I went on line and chatted with tech support. They went through the drills and we swapped my HD box with a SD box in one of my bedrooms and the SD box did not pixelate or glitch at all. The HD box on the other hand was locking, glitching and pixelating excessivley to the point where you could not watch tv.

They sent a new box and during its initialization it locked up during this check. Apparently there seems to be a problem with :

Ch No: 622

Freq: 111 MHz

SNR: POOR, 26

PRE/POST BER: 56137/56128

ACG: FAIR 75

Lock: Yes

Why would that one channel be so week and the rest are GOOD?

Could it be the replacement box is bad too. I would think the probability of that would be very low.

[PajamaGuy]

FWIW - I have 2 CISCO HD DVR's and 1 STB.  V* has replaced the splitter and the main board on the control panel.  Channel 618 still freezes, as do several others in the 600's.  Sometimes it's only 1 set, sometimes 2, and sometimes all 3 freeze.  SNR is 23+ on all.  The fix has been to change channel, then change back.  Sometimes it is still frozen on the channel in the morning (frozen for 5-6 hours), yet skipping up a channel and back down releases it.

Go figure... (never had the problem with 20+years of DirecTV)

[chiques]

Hey PajamaGuy,

That to me sounds like a buggy system. 

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@PajamaGuy wrote:

FWIW - I have 2 CISCO HD DVR's and 1 STB.  V* has replaced the splitter and the main board on the control panel.  Channel 618 still freezes, as do several others in the 600's.  Sometimes it's only 1 set, sometimes 2, and sometimes all 3 freeze.  SNR is 23+ on all.  The fix has been to change channel, then change back.  Sometimes it is still frozen on the channel in the morning (frozen for 5-6 hours), yet skipping up a channel and back down releases it.

Go figure... (never had the problem with 20+years of DirecTV)

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[chiques · Accepted solution]

Hopefully this saves someone else a $90 service call:

Tech came out today and was puzzled for a while. He initially thought it was coax that was chewed by  rodents

He hooked up his diagnostic machine (which is very sophisticated) and found the gain was way too low. The minimum the system is designed to work is -6db and my outlet was reading -8.9db. 

After further discussion we took at look at the splitter which was being used. My splitter I had is rated from 200-500MHz. The Verizon FioS system operates at 1GHz so we suspected the signal loss was coming from that.

He replaced it with a 1GHz splitter that optimized 1 output and had a little more loss at the two other outputs. He connected and tested again. My outet now was reading +6dB. 

The splitter was the problem.

FYI. if you guy do this make sure you "REBOOT" all boxes and the router. The DVR bit rate between the boxes was still stuck in the previous reading. After rebooting the HD box it was up at the same rate of the other system links.

[earles1]

We have been having this problem since the upgrade to quantum. It happens a lot and getting out of hand. All customer service does is send commands to the box.  It also does not come out of sleep mode.  We had to refresh the box 6 times today alone.

How do we fix this?