Milwaukee HDTV User Group

Is anyone else having issues with Time Warner Cable occasionally having channels turning on the "Audio Descriptive Service" even though no other channels do?

If you don't know what that is, it describes the non-verbal action for the seeing impaired.  "Bob opens the door", etc...

I've checked the settings on the box and on the TV, the SAP is NOT enabled.  In fact turning on the SAP will sometimes get rid of it...but then most of the other channels are in Spanish.  Oy...

Any thoughts?

The only upside being, if by some statistical anomaly your new modem should fail, you've got a TWC approved replacement already in house.

Watch your bills after doing this though...in case they keep billing you for the modem since it's in your house.

You will keep the telephony modem for the phone only, and use your purchased modem for internet.

They will not charge you modem rental for the phone service.

I'm in the same boat, and this is what the phone rep told me.

Well let's see...

1 phone
2 iPod touch
3 Kindles (not Kindle Fire...so these don't account for much)
2 laptops
2 desktops
3 Roku boxes
Xbox
Wii
1 "Smart" Blu-Ray

The daughter streams a TON of anime, the boy likes to watch YouTube videos alot.
He also Skypes with his buddies while online gaming as well.
My wife and I watch a movie every once in a while, but I think the lion's share of this is the kids.

I'm thinking it has to be the YouTube and the streaming as I can't think of anything else we do that would be that big of "bandwidth suck".

If we do get capped, the kids will have to seriously rethink their habits.

I wasn't aware this was out there. I also wasn't aware of how much usage I had.  I know the kids use their Roku boxes quite a bit, and my son is a fiend for some online games...but  yikes.

Is 95Gb in a month a lot?  That was April.

Did something happen today as well?  I had the outage the other day, but I'm having extreme slowness today.  I'm lucky if I'm getting 1mb download speed.  I usally get between 12mb - 20mb.

I've tried modem & router resets...no joy.

I should add...I'm in Sussex.  I've had the same results with anything connected to our network.

Dave,

You may want to send your entire recap to TWCableHelp@twcable.com (the also have a twitter account).

I've found these online help resources to be a LOT more productive than actually calling in.  It might not amount to much, but what does it hurt with the time you've already put in.

Good Luck!

Time Warner did get back to me, saying it was a known issue, and mentioniong the software update "sometime in the next 2 weeks".  So we'll see...I hate to lose everything we've got on the box...but if it becomes problematic, I'll keep that info in my back pocket.

Thank you!

While I wait for TWCableHelp to get back to me, I'm wondering if anyone here has any suggestions.

We've been having more and more problems with this box.  It has dropped recordings because of "unresolved conflicts" when non exist.  It has allowed us to schedule "series" recordings, but not even picked up the very episode that we used to start the series recording.

Case in point.  How I Met Your Mother wasn't set to record last night.  So...I deleted the series recordinge.  Rebooted the box, and then reset the series recording...it didn't pick it up.  I could set it manually however.

But...when I did that, the series recording for Dancing With the Stars fell off.  I had to manually set that one too...

So it's happening most often when we have two tapings at the same time.  Even if we're not watching the box, and I've gone ahead and tuned the two channels in question so that the tuners shouldnt' have any conflict!

I'm afraid we're looking at a box swap, which I really don't want to do.  One...we have a few items to catch up on on this box and Two...I have a feeling that we'll get stuck with a box with lower HD capacity.

Any thoughts?

I currently have an Arris TM402G eMTA that's running both my phone service and my internet.  Going by the TWC site, it seems that I'd have to by a separate cable modem, split the line, and still have the eMTA anyhow.

Basically...because I have phone service, am I just screwed on the rental charge?

I'm probably going to talk to them about this modem anyhow as it's older and doesn't support DOCSIS 3.0. (At least not that I could see)

UPDATE - The TWC twitter help, confirmed that I can get a separate modem and so long as I only use the Arris for phone, I won't have the charge.  I asked if I can buy my own telephony modem rather than split my signal yet again...that answer was no.  Seems kind of pointless, but I may look into getting my own modem.  Now if I can figure out how to pare down one of my DVR's I can really save some money.

Do his other devices that DID have sound use HDMI?  If not it could still be the TV.  

My father's Vizio flakes out now and again (usually after some sort of power fluctuation).  To get the cable & HDMI working again we have to do a hard reset of the TV.

Can he try the cable box via component or even co-ax?

It depends on what box you have, the newer Cisco and Samsung boxes will do the full screen (although it's NOT HD), but the older boxes cannot.

I've noticed it quite often with commercials, programming and the news is the worst.  I thought it was our box, or HDMI sync at some point, but no other channels were doing it.

CBS has been having the worst pixelation and break up lately as well.  I'm in the Sussex area just for comparison.

I've got a Samsung in my living room (320GB), and our old 8300HDC is in the basement.  We decided to get an extra box when we moved, and I requested the Samsung on the truck roll.  They didn't give me any hassle about it at all.

The only thing they mentioned was that the 500GB boxes were reserved for their Signature customers.

I whined enough about the moving fees, that I got reduced service charges for the year and free Showtime for 6 months (not impressed btw).  Once my year is up, I might inquire about Signature service....we'll see.

Everything is working fine at home, but I cannot see anything on the site.

It shows me what I owe (go figure everything else breaks, but I can still send them money!), but claims that I don't have any services.

Anybody else?