On Demand quality issues

[Tom_D]

I am relatively new to Uverse.  I am enjoying the free HBO this weekend and watching Avatar on demand in SD (my HD TV will be here next week).  I see pixelation at times and short pauses while I am watching.  Is this normal?  Will this be better or worse when watching HD? 

[Tom_D]

I guess someone at AT&T saw my post 'cause now I get "On Demand temporarily unavailable.  Please try again later." right in the middle of the movie.  I'm glad I am not paying for this "premium" content as I am very unimpressed right now.

[Tom_D]

Well, I backed out of On Demand and then came back in and Avatar was waiting right where I left it and I was able to finish the movie.  Aside from commenting on the movie itself, I find it difficult to understand what all the fuss was about, I still had pauses and pixelations at times through to the end of the movie.  It was certainly watchable but the distractions lasted through to the end of the credits.  I can't believe this is the Uverse everyone else is happy with.

I have recorded several movies (non from HBO, it seems we can't record HBO) and have not seen these issues on playback so it must be an On Demand thing. 

[ram1220]

This does seem to be normal for Uverse lately. My patience with Uverse is just about gone. I set 4 movies to record while out of town for Thanksgiving. Got home and tried to watch them but only 1 would play. I got the danged black screen of death for the other 3. And yes the problems you are seeing with VOD has been normal for Uverse lately. There are several other posters that have commented about it in other posts. While I don't like Dish, it's what my relatives had in 2 different house where I was for Thanksgiving. And I must say Dish worked and worked well. And there was none of the Uverse pixelixation, picture pauses, stupid error messages, and none of the Uverse motion artifacts on the HD. Dish just plain worked right. It was really nice to watch good HD for a couple days. 

 Bob

[Tom_D]

I am getting popping sounds every once in a while on the non HD movies I have recorded over this preview period, have no idea what that is about.

I left DirecTV for Uverse and have been happy with the package.  

I don't expect to use On Demand as I have not subscribed to any of the Premium content and was just trying stuff out during the free period.  

I know now to look to Blue Ray for HD movies.

[RCSMG ACE - Master]

It seems like VOD is being updated due the recent reduction in content.  The incident you reported that vod was suddenly unavailable bares that out as well.  Sometimes the vod offerings aren't the best quality but in my experience the vod offerings have been of good quality.  YRMV.

[rmrees]

On Demand HD has been unwatchable.  period..

Pixelation, hitching, freezing, sound dropping out, and right at the end of "Training Day" got temporarily unavailable.  Down right unacceptable.

Real time TV has similar issues, but not as prevalent.

If I call AT&T for tech support, they will send some technician over to move my gateway to another room, which will not fix the issue.  Guaranteed.  My current set up is very clean where the signal issue is bandwidth into my house.  This technology is pushing huge amounts of data over a standard twisted pair.  Even with signal compression algorithms, they are pushing too much data.  That's why On Demand fails much more frequently - it taxes the system.

I'm not sure how much longer I can pay for this...

[SomeJoe7777 ACE - Geek]

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rmrees wrote:

On Demand HD has been unwatchable.  period..

Pixelation, hitching, freezing, sound dropping out, and right at the end of "Training Day" got temporarily unavailable.  Down right unacceptable.

Real time TV has similar issues, but not as prevalent.

If I call AT&T for tech support, they will send some technician over to move my gateway to another room, which will not fix the issue.  Guaranteed.  My current set up is very clean where the signal issue is bandwidth into my house.  This technology is pushing huge amounts of data over a standard twisted pair.  Even with signal compression algorithms, they are pushing too much data.  That's why On Demand fails much more frequently - it taxes the system.

I'm not sure how much longer I can pay for this...

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So ... let me make sure I have this straight:

On Demand is freezing and has pixelation ...

... then some miracle chain of illogic occurs ...

... and the bandwidth is the problem.

You're correct that the problems currently being experienced by many customers regarding VOD HD are unacceptable, but you can't make sweeping grand statements about the bandwidth being the culprit when you have not one shred of evidence supporting that.

The fact is that there is plenty of line bandwidth for the VOD.  Customers have either 19 Mbps, 25 Mbps, or 32 Mbps of user-available bandwidth to their house, and a single VOD stream uses 7.5 Mbps.  Even the lowest provisioned users can watch 2 VOD HD streams with plenty of overhead remaining.

The speculation at this point is that there is a back-end server-related problem that is affecting VOD HD.  One user posted earlier today that he called AT&T regarding this issue and was told that it is a known issue that it being worked on.

[rmrees]

@SomeJoe7777:

OK, theoretically the twisted pair connection to my house can handle the bandwidth.  But stating "miracle chain of illogic occurs" is just inflamatory without knowing the root cause of the comment.

I have had 3 technicians (4 including today) try various "fixes",  since not only does On Demand have issues, but real time TV does, too.

I understand that On Demands root cause is different and apparently related to "delivery" issues, not bandwidth.

I have clean connections to both HDTVs; type F connectors have been replaced; an incoming filter has been placed between the twisted pair and the RG; changed HDMI to component video on one HDTV.

The pixelation and freezing issues have been reduced, not eliminated.  Hitching occurs daily.

The technician told me that I can only receive 2 HD streams & 2 SD streams due to the distance from the fiber to pedestal to twisted pair to my home.

So if it's not bandwidth, then what is it?  Noise figure??  VSWR??  RF Black Magic???

[michail77]

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rmrees wrote:

On Demand HD has been unwatchable.  period..

Pixelation, hitching, freezing, sound dropping out, and right at the end of "Training Day" got temporarily unavailable.  Down right unacceptable.

.....

 This technology is pushing huge amounts of data over a standard twisted pair.  Even with signal compression algorithms, they are pushing too much data.  That's why On Demand fails much more frequently - it taxes the system.

I'm not sure how much longer I can pay for this...

---

It has nothing to do with local bandwidth.  VOD was flawless for me (and others) until this recent national failure we're all experiencing.

As for what's going wrong now seems to just be speculation (software upgrade gone bad, VOD server load too high, etc.).  I don't think there has been an official word on what the problem is or when it will be fixed.

[SomeJoe7777 ACE - Geek]

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rmrees wrote:

I have had 3 technicians (4 including today) try various "fixes",  since not only does On Demand have issues, but real time TV does, too.

I understand that On Demands root cause is different and apparently related to "delivery" issues, not bandwidth.

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OK, you mentioned live TV in your post, but until you clarified in your second post I was not aware that it was severe enough to be considered a problem.  Most people get some freezes/glitches occuring sporadically, maybe once a day or something like that, which is what I thought you were referring to.  If you're getting them more often, enough to be considered objectionable, then that is most likely a different problem than what is currently affecting VOD.

To troubleshoot, I recommend running U-Verse Realtime and posting the screenshots.

Please download U-Verse Realtime, install it, and post screenshots of the IP/Profile tab, Bitloading tab, Error Table tab, and Coax/HPNA tab.

To post screenshots here in the forum, you will need to upload them to a photo sharing site, like Picasa, Google, Photobucket, ImageShack, etc.