TWC Please Investigate Intermittent Loss of Picture on Channels 19, 1005, and 1012

[Jack 1000]

Spoke too soon!  Pixiation on both channels tonight 1005, and 1012.  Don't want to call because the CSR dolts will just want to do a box swap and they will probably send someone out that will typically find nothing wrong.  (Signals were very good at last service call about three months ago on same issue with different box, and 1052, Fox News-HD, which has since been resolved.)

I am located in Brookfield, about three blocks West of Calhoun Road and about a block and a half North of Greenfield Avenue.  In the Greenfield Heights sub-division.

It is something in the node for sure. I will be recording all of channel 6 and 12 content on the SD channels from now on.  I would recommend very frequent and watchful monitoring of this sub-division for the HD stations in the range of 1005-1016 on the TWC Milwaukee Metro system for this node

Jack

Last week or so, we had about a six hour downtime in our node for TWC Digital Phone and Road Runner.  Digital Cable stayed on during this time.

The approximate pattern for the loss of channels 1005 and 1012 usually goes in one to two week increments:

All shows and stations will be fine starting on a Monday and for that first week, sometimes nothing will happen and everything will be fine.  On alternating weeks, we might lose just channels 1005 and 1012, and sometimes 1010 and 1015, and 1016.  In isolated instances channel 7 and 95 will also go out, but the main issue for simplicity is always channels 1005 and 1012.

The outage time begins usually around late Thursday afternoon about 5 to 6 PM after everything has been OK.  I would check station 1005 for the recording of $%My Dad Says and it would be OK at say 3 PM.  Later that Thursday night, I would find out that the show did not record, "Channel Not Available" and channel 1005 is off. (Black Screen.)  Channel 1012 is also always off at the same time, (Black Screen.)

Sometimes the same late afternoon outage will occur on a Friday or Saturday afternoon, presumably at about the same time slot, maybe a little later, let's say approximately 7PM.  When it goes out on Saturday, my Mom likes to watch ABC News between 4-5 am, and always has to go to channel 12 on the SD channel to see it.  None of the SD channels are affected by this process, except in the rare cases of channel 7 and 95.

Particulars for study (See above.)

1.) If channels 1005 and 1012 are lost on a Thursday afternoon or evening, they are generally restored about two days later, as if nothing have happened.

2.) If channels 1005 and 1012 are lost on a  Saturday, service never comes back for those stations until Monday morning or early afternoon. (Like never before 10am Monday.)

3.) The channels never seem to be lost early in the week.  In fact, the issues above happen sometimes each week, and other times on alternate weeks.  For the past three months or so, I have no recollection of going say more than three weeks without issue #1 or issue #2 happening.  I have not been able to isolate whether issue #1 or issue #2 happens more, just weekly to alternate weeks either #1 or #2 will happen.

Rebooting the box.  Level 1's CSR response for solving all the worlds' problems, only brings back the signal for like a day or so.  It does not break the cycle of events indicated by #1 or #2 of the above.

The most recent issue after the system maintenance on Road Runner and Digital Phone last week or so in my node, was that we had issue #1 last week, BUT channels 1010 and 1015  stayed on.  So that was different and some improvement!  Than Monday morning, like I illustrated in #1, all stations came back on.

My previous boxes had the same issues.

Jack

[Jack 1000]

Last week or so, we had about a six hour downtime in our node for TWC Digital Phone and Road Runner.  Digital Cable stayed on during this time.

The approximate pattern for the loss of channels 1005 and 1012 usually goes in one to two week increments:

All shows and stations will be fine starting on a Monday and for that first week, sometimes nothing will happen and everything will be fine.  On alternating weeks, we might lose just channels 1005 and 1012, and sometimes 1010 and 1015, and 1016.  In isolated instances channel 7 and 95 will also go out, but the main issue for simplicity is always channels 1005 and 1012.

The outage time begins usually around late Thursday afternoon about 5 to 6 PM after everything has been OK.  I would check station 1005 for the recording of $%My Dad Says and it would be OK at say 3 PM.  Later that Thursday night, I would find out that the show did not record, "Channel Not Available" and channel 1005 is off. (Black Screen.)  Channel 1012 is also always off at the same time, (Black Screen.)

Sometimes the same late afternoon outage will occur on a Friday or Saturday afternoon, presumably at about the same time slot, maybe a little later, let's say approximately 7PM.  When it goes out on Saturday, my Mom likes to watch ABC News between 4-5 am, and always has to go to channel 12 on the SD channel to see it.  None of the SD channels are affected by this process, except in the rare cases of channel 7 and 95.

Particulars for study (See above.)

1.) If channels 1005 and 1012 are lost on a Thursday afternoon or evening, they are generally restored about two days later, as if nothing have happened.

2.) If channels 1005 and 1012 are lost on a  Saturday, service never comes back for those stations until Monday morning or early afternoon. (Like never before 10am Monday.)

3.) The channels never seem to be lost early in the week.  In fact, the issues above happen sometimes each week, and other times on alternate weeks.  For the past three months or so, I have no recollection of going say more than three weeks without issue #1 or issue #2 happening.  I have not been able to isolate whether issue #1 or issue #2 happens more, just weekly to alternate weeks either #1 or #2 will happen.

Rebooting the box.  Level 1's CSR response for solving all the worlds' problems, only brings back the signal for like a day or so.  It does not break the cycle of events indicated by #1 or #2 of the above.

The most recent issue after the system maintenance on Road Runner and Digital Phone last week or so in my node, was that we had issue #1 last week, BUT channels 1010 and 1015  stayed on.  So that was different and some improvement!  Than Monday morning, like I illustrated in #1, all stations came back on.

My previous boxes had the same issues.

Jack

Today the problem began Wednesday afternoon with 1005 and 1012 off. Let's see what happens using the above as a guide.  The channels are black now, so we have to watch  channel 6 and 12 in SD.  My guess is it will probably come back Friday morning.

This is a prime example of why I NEVER, NEVER, EVER want TWC to implement an automatically tune to the HD station when the SD channel is selected.  I need my shows as a backup on SD when the HD feed fails!

Jack

[brewtownska]

Just curious, do you know any of your neighbors well enough to find out if they ever notice the same issues you do?  It's been said various places on this forum that the way to get TWC to truly investigate an issue is if a certain number of people call to complain in the same physical area within a short period of time.

So, if you can find a few other people who have experienced this, maybe you can plan out a day for everyone to call and complain.  Or, even if you don't complain at the same time, knowing it affects multiple people may be enough info to get a TWC customer service person to move you up to a level 3 person who WILL take the info seriously.

You have to look at it from their side - if only 1 person complains about an issue, they have to assume it's a problem with your equipment or line.  But if multiple people in the same area complain, it's probably an issue further up the line.

[Jack 1000]

Just curious, do you know any of your neighbors well enough to find out if they ever notice the same issues you do?  It's been said various places on this forum that the way to get TWC to truly investigate an issue is if a certain number of people call to complain in the same physical area within a short period of time.

So, if you can find a few other people who have experienced this, maybe you can plan out a day for everyone to call and complain.  Or, even if you don't complain at the same time, knowing it affects multiple people may be enough info to get a TWC customer service person to move you up to a level 3 person who WILL take the info seriously.

You have to look at it from their side - if only 1 person complains about an issue, they have to assume it's a problem with your equipment or line.  But if multiple people in the same area complain, it's probably an issue further up the line.

We know a couple of people  to understand that they don't watch enough TV to make a difference.  From time to time, I have heard of other people with the same problems on these exact channels.  

What you said is exactly true.  The more people who call in, the more likely the issue is to be taken seriously.  I learned years ago, that you have to have six people in the same node, to call about an issue for emergency field tech dispatch.  Thing is, we don't know six neighbors! LOL!

Jack

[Jack 1000]

We had an outage of Cable/Digital Phone/Road Runner today for about 30 minutes in our node.  Maybe this was what was needed to solve our channel 1005 and 1012 problem.  Let's hope this has been resolved!

Jack

[Talos4]

We had an outage of Cable/Digital Phone/Road Runner today for about 30 minutes in our node.  Maybe this was what was needed to solve our channel 1005 and 1012 problem.  Let's hope this has been resolved!

Jack

Well I was back to many of my HD channels "not  available at this time" Tuesday night and yesterday.

This morning ALL channels froze then black for about 10 mins. around 5:50 AM. Then returned. I didn't have time to check the channels that were not available recently.

[Jack 1000]

Well I was back to many of my HD channels "not  available at this time" Tuesday night and yesterday.

This morning ALL channels froze then black for about 10 mins. around 5:50 AM. Then returned. I didn't have time to check the channels that were not available recently.

Let's just hope they are working on the problem, or have an upgrade in the systen for a resolution to the problem.

Jack

[Jack 1000]

Just a FYI,

The power company came out yesterday to replace all the drop poles in our area.  We had two hours of downtime for all power in the house.  So if this is somewhat related, or totally related, to the above issues in this thread, time will tell.

Jack

[gparris]

It's not just only my home, but other folks I know of in the area that I have asked, lately, having the same problem in the past week:
There has been pixelation, drop outs, picture and sound breakups on other channels, not just on channels 1005 and 1012.
Other HD channels, such as SYFYHD, some DisneyHD (other subs), other locals, some music HD channels and so on are having these issues, too.
At first I thought it was just my setup, which hasn't been touched as of late, but this has been getting worse on many of the HD channels.

What is going on?

It couldn't be the weather this past week, it has been relatively calm.
While it is true that satelliteTV fades a bit in a severe storm, TWC, but so do your own satlinks, which you feed into the cable system, so you aren't immune, despite your commercials to the contrary; when there are storms in the area, we see it on our HDTV screens, just like satellite.

TWC subs do not appreciate this current mess, so if it continues to happen, those that will leave will do so, voting with their pocket books.

- I don't see anyone in this forum complaining about this from Dish or Directv, so it has to be your cable delivery system malfunctioning. :confused:

TWC: You haven't added those HD channels your website keeps telling us about for months, so it's not that, either, nor would I suspect you would add them considering your have probably maxed out the space in your system long ago with that Switched Digital Video mess you had to use for whatever reasoning.

Also, keep your "start over" and other on-demand offerings you brag about, if you can't keep a good signal throughout your system for regular HD channels, okay? :mad:

[Jack 1000]

We were out on channels 1005, 1016, and 1012 again this morning.  I think the only way that TWC is going to be able to solve this problem once and for all is going to be an increase of bandwidth.  Anyone know what that would involve?  Other than the obvious of dumping channels 2-99, which are analog, and are taking up so much space anyway. (And most are on the digital tier beginning at 100+)

Their system capacity is currently maxed out, and as no one at least that I am aware of has reported this issue on Dish Network, Direct TV, or U-Verse, this is a TWC problem that has now been intermittent for the past 6-12 months.

Jack

[Xizer]

Time Warner still has millions of customers on analog cable and they are too afraid to say "**** you, get with the program. It's time to join the rest of us in the 21st century you cretins. You will take this digital cable box and you will like it."

They are going to continue to let these analoggers drag the rest of us down until they feel the number of basic subscribers has decreased to be sufficiently small. Many cable operators have been killing their analog offerings including TWC but their Milwaukee market still has a lot of them so I wouldn't expect them to scrap the analog channels in this market until 2012 at the earliest.

They have great incentive to do this, cut off an easy way to steal cable (analog cable is child's play to steal), and free up the massive amount of bandwidth. It's all about getting the old people and poors on board.

[Jack 1000]

Time Warner still has millions of customers on analog cable and they are too afraid to say "**** you, get with the program. It's time to join the rest of us in the 21st century you cretins. You will take this digital cable box and you will like it."

They are going to continue to let these analoggers drag the rest of us down until they feel the number of basic subscribers has decreased to be sufficiently small. Many cable operators have been killing their analog offerings including TWC but their Milwaukee market still has a lot of them so I wouldn't expect them to scrap the analog channels in this market until 2012 at the earliest.

They have great incentive to do this, cut off an easy way to steal cable (analog cable is child's play to steal), and free up the massive amount of bandwidth. It's all about getting the old people and poors on board.

Cosign!

Other cable companies have gone "All Digital" for several years now.  I know Cox is one, and it really helps in picture quality.  If the elderly and poor survived the DTV conversion, which went well, all things considered, hopefully there can be some incentive to get them to pay $7.00 a month for a digital box.  Digital really makes a difference.......well...........when it works!!! LOL!

Jack

[Jack 1000]

Cosign!

Other cable companies have gone "All Digital" for several years now.  I know Cox is one, and it really helps in picture quality.  If the elderly and poor survived the DTV conversion, which went well, all things considered, hopefully there can be some incentive to get them to pay $7.00 a month for a digital box.  Digital really makes a difference.......well...........when it works!!! LOL!

Jack

Some years ago, I read that TWC had at least 80% of its subs on a Digital Box, so I don't know how much smaller they expect that 20% analog audience to get before they go to an all-digital format.

Jack

[brewtownska]

It's too bad TWC doesn't have people monitoring this site to help with these kinds of issues.  I know over on the Satellite Guys Dish Network forum, there are Dish employees that actually interact with people posting and confirm/deny rumors, fix account issues, and even offer advice ranging from changes to packages to installation help.

I'm just thinking out loud here, but I wonder what is left to do that you haven't already tried that may get their attention to fix the issue.  I'm sure people have suggested getting a higher level tech on the phone to bypass the first line of customer service (I know that exists for Roadrunner, not sure about regular cable issues).

Maybe ask if they offer any diagnostic device they can install on your line or in your neighborhood that would monitor some of this stuff - then they can see for themselves what problems occur.  Anyone know if the TWC digital boxes store any of these kinds of tuning errors and can be retrieved later?  If they can see "yes, there have been 50 tuning errors on channel 1005 in the past month", that might help.

Only other thing I can think of is to call and tell them you want to cancel your service.  Typically they transfer you to someone who asks you what they can do to KEEP your business.  That would be the perfect person to explain your issues to and say you'd KEEP their service IF they can fix your problems.  I'd like to think they get a higher level tech on the line or sent to your house.  Maybe they'll give you a price break temporarily until they can fix the issues???

If they can't at least give you an indication they are TRYING to fix your problem, then maybe you truly start looking for a different service provider.  Sometimes the only way they can gauge customer dissatisfaction is with churn, so leaving would help them realize they are doing something wrong.

Good luck!

[Jack 1000]

It's too bad TWC doesn't have people monitoring this site to help with these kinds of issues.  I know over on the Satellite Guys Dish Network forum, there are Dish employees that actually interact with people posting and confirm/deny rumors, fix account issues, and even offer advice ranging from changes to packages to installation help.

I'm just thinking out loud here, but I wonder what is left to do that you haven't already tried that may get their attention to fix the issue.  I'm sure people have suggested getting a higher level tech on the phone to bypass the first line of customer service (I know that exists for Roadrunner, not sure about regular cable issues).

Maybe ask if they offer any diagnostic device they can install on your line or in your neighborhood that would monitor some of this stuff - then they can see for themselves what problems occur.  Anyone know if the TWC digital boxes store any of these kinds of tuning errors and can be retrieved later?  If they can see "yes, there have been 50 tuning errors on channel 1005 in the past month", that might help.

Only other thing I can think of is to call and tell them you want to cancel your service.  Typically they transfer you to someone who asks you what they can do to KEEP your business.  That would be the perfect person to explain your issues to and say you'd KEEP their service IF they can fix your problems.  I'd like to think they get a higher level tech on the line or sent to your house.  Maybe they'll give you a price break temporarily until they can fix the issues???

If they can't at least give you an indication they are TRYING to fix your problem, then maybe you truly start looking for a different service provider.  Sometimes the only way they can gage customer dissatisfaction is with churn, so leaving would help them realize they are doing something wrong.

Good luck!

I have a Special Request on my account today, but no one called or anything, so maybe, just maybe, someone at TWC is watching this forum.  It's not the issue of getting it fixed.  They fix it, BUT IT DOESN'T STAY FIXED!!!!  I wish someone would tell them about this forum!  Why doesn't TWC want to provide help on a public forum like the competition does, as Brewtown stated above?

Jack