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So I've noticed recently that my NTL Broadband connection doesn't seem to be as fast as it once was- nothing major- just pages taking longer to load, a few more 'lost network connection' messages than is usual.

It got me thinking about how reliable my old dial-up connection with NTL used to be- until broadband arrived and it started acting up.  I never understood that- I mean more and more people were signing up for broadband, which meant fewer and fewer people were using the dial-up system and yet, for some reason,  dial-up became more unstable than ever and would disconnect at the drop of a hat.

A suspicious and deeply paranoid mind might blame a deliberate sabotaging of dial-up to get everyone to switch to broadband and rake in more cash.  An equally suspicious and deeply paranoid mind might also make the same connection between his recently slowed broadband connection and the flyer that arrived with his bill that proclaims:

'Unlimited 4MB now available!  Only ?7 extra per month!'

In other news, the idle fucks that have taken two months to finally agree a day to come and correct a job that they've already been paid for have rung and cancelled because the c*nting football is on.

>:(

Its national Engerlund day dontcherknow?

Yeah, I've noticed my NTL broadband has slowed considerablly recently. I hate NTL. Once I had to wait 4 weeks for some NTL engineers to come along and fix my phone - which had been disconnected through no fault of my own - and when they did finally send a team around all that happened was one of the blokes asked to use the toilet and disappeard  in there for 30 mins, i could hear him flushing the chain every five minutes and when he came out he said they didn't have the equipment to fix my phone and they buggered off. I then discovered he had used all my frigging bog paper.

I can no longer switch off the power to my modem - it has to stay on standby - because if I switch it off I get thrown to the back of some kind of "get on the cable" queue, and it's too busy to let me on - I had to phone them to get back onto the internet - at which point they said "never unplug the modem, man!".

So, reduced speed may be to do with increased usage.

BUT - I wouldn't put it past the cable companies to rip their customers off - after all, they already charge an arm and a leg for the most basic service (with a ridiculous 'you can't cancel for a year or we'll blacklist your ass' caveat on the contract).

As it is, I've never found 256K to be a problem.  I don't need any more than that.  My penis is huge, though.

A suspicious and deeply paranoid mind might blame a deliberate sabotaging of dial-up to get everyone to switch to broadband and rake in more cash.

You're not paranoid (unless I am too). Everyone feel free to ignore the following related rant, but this seems like a good place to vent my spleen.

Companies do this all the time, sometimes blatant, sometimes subtle. Nothing wrong with digital TV, for instance, but I don't want it simply becuase I resent being told to get it each and every time I turn on my TV. Sure it might be the greatest thing that's ever happened, but as there's nothing actually wrong with my TV as it is I'll pass, thanks. Oh, what's this? I now have no choice as they'll be turning off the old transmitters, forcing me to go digital. Thanks very fucking much.

In a pointless and very immature protest, I've come to accept that after 2012 I won't be watching any more TV - simply because I refuse to be forced to get digital for the sake of it, regardless of how good it might be. Talk about suffering for your principles, but I'm a dick like that.

General rant feel free to ignore. But...

'Good morning, NTL. Have you tried turning it off and on again?'
Bastards.
Paranoid and suspicious? Funny how my connection's been world beating since my 'complimentary 2-meg trial period'. I give it about 3 weeks before the thing crashes again.
xTGx

I can entirely sympathise, althought it tends to be programmes that I ignore if there's an absolute flood of badgering by the channel.

Digital's a bit of a mixed bag to be honest. They make dubious claims of 'digital quality' which is the biggest load of meaningless horseshit ever.

Some of the channels look like crap because they're trying to squeeze too much in.

That said, I love my PVR. Record 2 progs at the same time while watching something you've recorded elsewhere. I rarely watch commercial TV live these days.

I don't really watch that many of the digital channels anyway, Sky Three for Deadwood and that's about it.

E4 can fuck off, I'd rather watch programmes without some moronic shit in the corner telling me that it's BRAND NEW or a SECOND CHANCE to see. I can barely tolerate a permanent channel logo.

Damn, you've got me at it now...

- Steve

Nothing like a good moan.


I lived in a not-so-salubrious suburb of Oporto for about a year and a half, 5-6 years ago.

At the time Portugal was in the grip of it's own mobile phone revolution.

The *only* landline and public phone kiosk service provider in the immediate area was PT, Portugal Telecom.

During that 18 months every, and I'm not exaggerating, ever public phone that got vandalized stayed vandalized, some times for weeks at a time until they were permanently removed.

One day there's a phone I can call home to the UK on, next day it's been bashed to bits, three weeks later there's a square of fresh concrete in the pavement where it used to stand.. ?!?

Then all of a sudden, well actually, when I'd learnt enough of the language so I could read PT advertisements it turns out  they pretty much had a strangle hold on the new(ish) mobile network(s).

Forcing those few who wanted to avoid expensive handsets and exorbitant contracts to join in.

MGBs

Should of added: them and the f**king phone manufacturers who were probably bunging PT a few Escudos to increase their unit sales..

:: Nothing wrong with digital TV

Maybe it's just me but the picture often seems pixelated and blocky - especially when it's fast moving or there are big areas of subtle texture like, um, a football pitch.

I know that's the nature of the technology which compresses the data, and that digital lets me a couple of useful features and the odd new channel, but my analogue signal whacks out a far better picture, or one which I prefer at least.

M@

i've just had the same issues with NTL and spent some time frigging about with my router and set-top box to see what the problem was...

most of the time it seems to fix itself after i've rebooted a couple of times, but i reckon this is largely due to coincidence

you should do what i did... ring them up to tell them you're leaving because of financial and reliability issues (i did this when i was made redundant). i got an free upgrade for 6 months to see if it made me feel any different

thinky

Maybe it's just me but the picture often seems pixelated and blocky - especially when it's fast moving or there are big areas of subtle texture like, um, a football pitch.

Or, if your watching through satellite, when it rains (Getting a sattelite dish in Bolton, not the cleverest idea.), or if it gets really sunny (Not so much of a problem for me...)

My cable modem connection does the same thing. Atthough my connection has cap on it.

The conection keeps a logg of the amount of mega bytes being used as the month goes by and renews at the start of each month. So, for brief period it alittle faster and then slows to barely acceptable speed that gets gradually slower as time progress's.

I'm okay if stick to downloading less than 200 mega bytes a day.

But that is hard to do otherwise it's not really worth the trouble of having a connection.

Anyway, if I am on for longer than fifteen minutes picutres and extra pages load real slowly or not at all.

It gets worse with the more pages I try to have up at once. Though I have been warned to only have one up at a time.

Anyway, it does get to the point of stopping altogehter so I end switching the modem off and restarting the computer which usealley does the trick but it is a bloody pain in the arse.

Fucking Hell- that's shit!  Who are you with?

There's a combination of two problems with Digital TV, reception which can lead to the picture freezing or partially updating, and shit picture quality on certain programmes.

On Freeview, the former is less of a problem since they've boosted the signal, but the latter you're at the mercy of the broadcasters.

It's a shame, since it could be a lot better if they weren't going the quantity over quality route.

The way it works is that a group of channels share the same space, so if another channel is added within that space, it would degrade the picture from the others.

It seems to have bottomed out though, any new channels that are being added are usually replacing unpopular ones.

Five are adding two channels, that they've acquired from Top-up TV, FilmFour starts in July replacing More4+1.

Still doesn't make the footy look any better though...

Cheers

Steve

FilmFour is going Freeview?

That could be good...

Yep,

I'm not sure when in July it's going to appear.

It's showing up in the list of channels on my box, but it's just a placeholder at the moment.

I think the space is being used by one of the interactive streams for Big Brother, so that will get booted off and replaced by FF.



Cheers

- Steve