Hi,

I've had Tiscali TV for a week now. The picture was fine until about the same time each night (10.30-11.00 ish) when the DSL would lose sync, and by the morning it was fine again.

I've spoken to Tiscali 3 times, they've changed the line profile but there's no improvement (it's actually worse now with constant break up), so I've been escalated to 2nd tier support, and I'm expecting a call within 48 hours.

I wondered initially if it was anything local to my house that was interfering, so I used surge / spike protectors on the router and set top box, which did remove gliches caused by the central heating thermostat clicking on and off, but the main problem remains.

I'm curious to know if anyone else has had the same problem, losing the line at specific times of day? And whether it has been fixed. Is it likely to be a problem at the exchange?

Incedentally my exchange is Mickleover, Derby. In the unlikely chance that anyone else reading this has Tiscali TV on that exchange (www.samknows.com), how's it working for you?

Also, during the installation, I was expecting the router to be positioned at my BT socket with an RJ45 cable running to the STB. However, the engineer positioned the router at the STB and ran an RJ11 to the BT socket (8 metres). This seems to contradict Tiscali's own advice (here) that extensions shouldn't be used between BT socket and router.

Anyone else had there setup installed this way?
Last edited by dirtyrichie : 09-02-2008 at 10:57

Yes, the way you have been installed is the norm.

Had a similar issue a few weeks ago. I had a monitored alarm installed and the installer hardwired the alarm to the telephone line (no splitter - idiot). I fixed that, but after that my service would still crash in the evenings and DSL would not train.

I replaced the master socket with a NTE2000 (from ebay) which helped marginally, but I still had problems. Finally, I replaced the RJ11 with a CAT5e lead and it solved the problem (also from ebay). Been rock solid ever since.

BTW, my bt point is 20 meters from the modem and it is fine with a cat5e lead.

Thanks for your replies, interesting what you said about the CAT5e cable amdg2000.
I'm not planning on rerunning cables just yet (2 walls to go through), until I've found out what 2nd tier support are up to (I rang back after 48 hours to find out that I'd been "misinformed", and that it would actually be upto 5 days before I hear from them, although I've read on other posts that callbacks are a rarity).

Just to clarify, you are using a CAT5e cable with RJ45 connection between BT socket and router? My router (ST585) only has an RJ11 socket for DSL, and 4 RJ45's for other connections.

Speaking of which, should the TV cable be plugged into a specific socket on the router, or are any of the 4 ok?

I'm running CAT5e with RJ45 between the master socket and the modem (the NTE2000 faceplate accepts RJ45) and then I have a little RJ45 to RJ11 dongle that I use to plug into the modem. I have seen CAT5E cables on ebay that are either rj11 at both ends or have RJ45 on one end and RJ11 on the other. If you don't want to re-run the cables, try replacing the faceplate on the BT NTE with the NTE2000 - it's simple to do and I know that this is what the tiscali engineers will try first as it solves many of the problems. You can get one of these on ebay for a few quid.

One other note....I also tried cabling it up with a "high speed adsl extension" that wasn't specified as CAT5E. It didn't work and was no better than telephone extension cable so make sure it is cat5e if you do decide to rewire.

The speedtouch modem is equipped with "flexiport" which means it can sense what is connected to the port. It doesn't matter what port you use to connect the STB to the router as the router will figure out how to configure it.

HTH

I kept losing sync from 6pm till just after 9pm each night. Was advised to cancel Tiscali TV as too much noise on line for it to be reliable to support the TV. Found a website www.kitz.co.uk (Low SNR margin & SNR Problems) which suggested some people had success disconnecting ringwire to reduce noise on line. This worked for me.

Thanks for the advice guys, might try it out this weekend.

Seems to make more sense that you're line would lose sync during peak hours, dgb123, whereas mine loses it when people are switching off for the night. But like kitz says, it can happen anytime.

Cheers

It's been a few weeks since I started this thread, I should probably tie it up for anyone who's interested...

After being escalated to 2nd tier support, the 5 days passed with no word. After a week I phoned asking what, if anything, was being done to resolve the problem, and was told the problem had been passed on to a subdivision of 2nd tier. I again requested that Tiscali contact me regarding any progress but another 6 days passed without a callback.

In the meantime I monitored my router with RouterStats from www.vwlowen.co.uk, and discovered that my SNR margin lowered and then suddenly dropped from 20 ish down to 3, before losing sync, a couple of times a day for upto 90 mins. I tried fitting faceplate XTE 2005 from www.adslnation.co.uk but this actually lowered my SNR margin, so I replaced my original filter from Tiscali. Maybe the NTE 2005 would have been better afterall. I also tried plugging the router in at the BT socket (through the filter), bypassing the cable the engineer installed, but this made no difference to the SNR so I assumed the cable was fine.

When I next phoned, I asked to speak to 2nd tier, but tech support told me that not even they could contact them, but just add more notes to the support ticket. He agreed with me that this was far from ideal, and told me that my previous requests for callbacks hadn't been added to the ticket; they'd just added my daytime contact number and left it at that.

It's fustrating enough when the problem takes too long to be fixed, but it should be obvious that the customer needs to be informed if it takes longer than expected.

However, since 27th Feb I've had unbroken service and even managed to watch a whole episode of Lost without it breaking up 5 mins from the end. SNR down the line hasn't dropped below 16 since.

Whether the subdivision team fixed the problem remotely or sent someone out to the exchange remains to be seen, or maybe I'm just having a lucky spell.

Tech Support advised me to contact Customer Services and request a refund for the period of poor service.
Last edited by dirtyrichie : 03-03-2008 at 21:26