The engineer arrived. He stunk of a mixture of cigarette smoke and cheap aftersave. A lovely old bloke though...
The box, again, had re-arranged the channels to its own liking, the engineer unplugged it and replaced it with a new one (Pace). The picture was now ok, not grainy anymore.
He said wait 2 hours for the updates to kick in and the box to get registered.
It now 3 hours later. It says "Sorry, your smartcard is invalid bla bla" I am calling 151, let's see what Mumbai has to say.....
Oh, well.....
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Disconnected, after 25 minutes waiting, before speaking to anyone. You can keep re-branding it until you turn blue, NTL will always be NTL
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The Indian guy from Mumbay, said "wait 48 hours and it will sort itself", if not they will sent a technician out.... BS I say, somebody had to do the pairing and hasn't done....
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It now says "Virgin Media" Powering up....Just a moment... the last hour...
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Phoned Mumbai again. They said error 1008 means critical failure of the smartcard, it was escalated to level 2, they will call me on my mobile in 3-4 working days.