Tv Or Talktalk Problem?

[feargal 21]

My parents live in S6, and have TalkTalk TV, Faster Fibre broadband and phone.  For well over a year, their TV picture is at times blocky and erratic, to the point of being unwatchable.  The picture improves if watching on the HD channels, but not all channels they like are HD.

 

They've had a new box, and a new TV, but the problem persists.  They have an older, smaller TV in the next room which is fine (different wire to the aerial, not a spur).

 

Can anyone suggest things to try?   TalkTalk say it might be a problem in the street box, but no-one else has reported problems, and they've had an aerial man out who couldn't find a problem..  They are not remotely interested in having super high speed broadband or anything, they just want to be able to watch TV!

[Phili Buster 10]

Make sure the 'box' has plenty of ventilation, it may be overheating slightly

[Annie Bynnol 612]

I use TalkTalk in S10. I have a box for recording on the problematic TV.

I have reset the box twice for the new settings as instructed.

For the last six months or so the TV quality  has deteriorated. Particularly for a  group of signals including  Channel 4 SD

The other TVs are fine.

TalkTalk "technical help" was worse than useless but since I have it free (because of miss selling  of their 150 fibre option) I am staying with them for a while.

My Huawei  made TalkTalk box have has no manual tuning facility but you can reset the box to either:

1)factory setting and KEEP recordings

2)factory  setting . You will LOOSE all setting and recordings

 

On my box this is not available on the main menu so:

switch off

unplug

wait 2 minutes

plug in

press "+" and"-" buttons on the front of the box -do not release.

press rear power button once.

press front power button once.

release  "+" and"-" buttons.

A Huawei menu appears, follow instruction to reset

If the TalkTalk sign appears try again or Google the box type.

 

 

press "+" and "-" continuously

[feargal 21]

Thanks Phili - the box is on a shelf about a foot away from the TV with plenty of ventilation, out of sunlight, etc.

 

Annie - I will ask them to try that, although I've lost count of how many times I've reset the bloody thing, let alone them.  I've not done it quite like that though, so I will give it a try and report back!  😁

[Arthur Ritus 30]

You really need to identify if  the problem is with uhf freeview or the broadband so you know who to deal with, what are you looking at whilst the problem is occurring, can you see signal strength and quality readings on the youview box for freeview channels?

 

I suspect uhf if picture going blotchy or pixelated as as the tv plays whatever it gets no matter how nonsensical whereas broadband streams with a buffer often checked that the info is as sent which usually causes frames to just freeze.

 

Down the uhf side there are lots of possibilities  - interference which can be external (we suffer due to the metal work of the football ground) or internal - is there a splitter or 2 aerials?  signals can bounce back from one end affecting the other and all manner of other weird things happen. I had a splitter that was great on all but one mux frequency which loses all the channels on that muz. Aerials and cabling deteriorate over time and there has been some messing about with transmitters (s6 would normally be crosspool).

It depends on how good your aerial guy was as to his examination ruling out an uhf problem, the guy in hillsborough https://www.aerialsandtv.com/  is good technically, his website is one of the best in the country in my opinion.

 

If its broadband then i presume it will be openreach job ( although can still be affected by interference), talktalk will want you to plug the router directly into the test socket eliminating all the rest of the houses phone line wiring.

 Incidentally we are having issues with talktalk (mines just basic slowband) and i have noticed there has been work going on -  new cabling to some of the tellywag posts so might be connected. I was hoping it might go away on its own so i don't have to have an engineer traipsing around the house, its manageable at the moment so i am going to soldier on for now.

 

ps. i am in s6 and i have reported my broadband so that was less than honest of them for starters, i find the community forum site   https://community.talktalk.co.uk/  better than the direct help ( i was chatting about my problem and he just disapeared never to be heard of again, how rude.

Edited March 19, 2020 by Arthur Ritus
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