NTL Reception very patchy

L

Lauren

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My parents have the standard NTL package and their reception is what I would consider, very very average 80% of the time. BBC2 and Channel 4 in particular are the worst. On two occasions in the past six months they have had NTL out. First time the reception was actually fine, the day the guy came out (typical!) He took their word for it and changed the connection box (inside the house) to see if it would rectify the problem. It didn't rectify the problem and after a few particular bad weeks this week again, they called NTL out again. Guy came out and guess what, reception was perfect. He looked at them as if they were mad and said he could not fix a problem that he couldn't see. Fair enough I guess.....
I'm wondering if anyone has experienced this type of problem before. Intermittently bad reception? I'm wondering if the NTL cabling in the area needs to be replaced or are there other connection devices outside the home that can be replaced and improve reception?

They have approached the neighbours but most have digital (which they don't want) or Sky so they can't determine if its a problem in the area or just with themselves.
 
Have you looked for sources of interference? I found that my cordless dect phone interfered with the reception of some channels on Sky if I left it close to the box. Until I realised what it was, I thought I had an intermittent fault in the setup as well.
 
Coincidentally my parents had the same issue. It was like the NTL service man was living with them, he was out so often. Eventually I convinced them to switch to Digital which they did. They still only watch the same few chanels but their picture is perfect. I wonder if NTL are deliberately not maintaining their analogue service so people will eventually be forced to switch to digital?
 
Sylvester, can't think of what it would be. They don't have cordless phones and tend not to use mobiles that much.

Fredbloggs - You could be right. There is no point upgrading old infrastructure if digital is the way to go I suppose....Its extra to upgrade to digital though and they are quite happy with the number of channels they have....
 
My own parents had this problem and in the end it turned out to be the cable between the outside and inside boxes. It had never been clipped to the wall and over time the constant movement in bad weather caused it to deteriorate.

After much persistence the cable was eventually replaced and reception is perfect again.

Maybe suggest this to the next engineer?
 
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