New cable from street cab to house

rodeoraymond · 12-05-2007, 14:51

Hi

Just had engineer around re problems recording on V+ box. He checked signal with meter and came to conclusion that a new cable needs to be run from the street cabinet to the house (he says that in evening too many boxes off the same cable will be affecting the signal).

Out of curiosity, what work does a new cable involve - will they have to dig up the street?? What is the timescale in getting this work done (days, weeks, months??)

Thanks for any help.

Paul · 12-05-2007, 14:59

Normally the cable is in a conduit that is already in place under the paving etc, they just pull a new cable through it.

virginmedia · 12-05-2007, 15:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paul

Normally the cable is in a conduit that is already in place under the paving etc, they just pull a new cable through it.

Thats why it is called a repull.

Nedkelly · 12-05-2007, 15:27

If you look in the garden you might see the route the cable takes from the black poit in the garden to the point on the wall

If you have dug your garden you might of seen a black or green tubeing in the garden thats if they used it .As for the time scales i take it the tech did not get you a date while he was there ? .It depends how busy the 2 man crews are in the area

Paul · 12-05-2007, 15:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by virginmedia

Thats why it is called a repull.

Now why didn't I think of that.........

virginmedia · 12-05-2007, 15:37

lol

on in an hour! · 12-05-2007, 18:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by virginmedia

Thats why it is called a repull.

bit cynical that post,considering a repull wasnt mentioned specifically

---------- Post added at 18:54 ---------- Previous post was at 18:34 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by rodeoraymond

Hi

Just had engineer around re problems recording on V+ box. He checked signal with meter and came to conclusion that a new cable needs to be run from the street cabinet to the house (he says that in evening too many boxes off the same cable will be affecting the signal).

Out of curiosity, what work does a new cable involve - will they have to dig up the street?? What is the timescale in getting this work done (days, weeks, months??)

Thanks for any help.

sorry to blow this guys BS out of the water but your signal from the street cabinet is a constant (barring any probs with the amp that feeds the cables) so excessive use from any other subs (or boxes,be they in your house or other houses) wont affect your signal,
if nothing other than your V+ recording arent working its nothing to do with the signal from the cabinet!! if youre not suffering from freezing pics,if you can access on-demand and interactive services,then your house has a good signal level,i cannot believe he fed you such crap,thats inexcusable

HandyMac · 13-05-2007, 20:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by on in an hour!

i cannot believe he fed you such crap,thats inexcusable

I'm not defending the guy, I wasn't there. But he might have just been inexperienced rather than trying to BS the customer. Under the circumstances maybe he gave it his best shot - which for most customers would probably sound plausible.

Last year we had an intermittent fault with our CM. Called it in, a youngish engineer turned up. My guess was that he was probably new to the job (everyone has to start somewhere). Intermittent problems continued, so I called it in again.

A short time later (next day) an older guy came round. He was inside our house for a couple of minutes, then left and came back 10 minutes later with another older bloke. Within a couple of minutes they had it sorted - something to do with signal strength from the local junction box I believe it was. Anyway, the intermittent fault went away and never came back.

Though I could have been disappointed with the first guys failure to fix the problem, I wasn't. I was a service tech once some years ago and intermittent problems were the bain of my life back then. It's a sad fact that when you are inexperienced you don't know the probable causes and some guesswork is involved. And rather than give the customer great confidence in your obvious abilities by saying I haven't got a clue!, you try to sound positive that you were on the case.

If the engineer had said Cor, that box is a stinking pile of *****e then I would endorse your feelings about him.

rodeoraymond · 13-05-2007, 21:27

Thanks for all the replies.

Having read a lot about V+ problems on these pages I did wonder what he said made any sense - I'm no expert so I could not really tell him I doubted his conclusion.

I've made so so many phone calls to Virgin Media that I just do not know what to do to get any satisfaction if this new cabling has no effect. When the engineer visit was arranged I thought the box would be replaced but at no stage did the engineer consider the box to be faulty. I showed him a problem recording - within about one second he said it was a signal issue, went to his van and took a meter out and tested, I explained we had 2 other STBs and he explained that the problem we had was due to more people using their STBs at peak times and it was lowering the signal strength and that our V+ box should have its own cable from the street box.

Any help would be much much appreciated.

Nedkelly · 13-05-2007, 21:34

If it was a signal problem to your house then your other boxes would be affected .The tech should of checked the levels at the V+ box and the omni box out side and looked around the house to work out loss and they way the other boxes have been wired up .Is the V+ box at the front of the house or at the back ?

rodeoraymond · 13-05-2007, 22:38

Thanks

There is a brown box outside (on the front of the house) - three cables from it (one going into one bedroom, one going into another bedroom, and the other one going into the lounge where the V+ box and stand alone modem for broadband is located).