Bad Cignal Cable TV reception today

First things first.

My cable went down a couple of times, both because a thief had split the cable and taken a link to their house so they could watch for free.
Easy to spot unless they did it up a pole - Just follow your wire and see if there are any splitter boxes on the run.

Other than that, water ingress or it could just be high demand because so many are stuck in their homes.

Neighbors have the same problem, has rained for 10 minutes so far this year.  Few were watching at 6 AM.  Same problem for 10 hours now.

Fred wrote:

My cable went down a couple of times, both because a thief had split the cable and taken a link to their house so they could watch for free.
Easy to spot unless they did it up a pole - Just follow your wire and see if there are any splitter boxes on the run.

Fred. . . . . Now did this thief have a cable box or modem to use the signal?  How did you spot it?

W9XR wrote:

Fred wrote:

My cable went down a couple of times, both because a thief had split the cable and taken a link to their house so they could watch for free.
Easy to spot unless they did it up a pole - Just follow your wire and see if there are any splitter boxes on the run.

Fred. . . . . Now did this thief have a cable box or modem to use the signal?  How did you spot it?

Maybe from an old address or subscription, who knows?
I know what a splitter looks like as I spent years dabbling in communications of various sorts

It's a bit obvious

Same problem today, 10 seconds on, 10 second freeze.

mugtech wrote:

Same problem today, 10 seconds on, 10 second freeze.

Not long ago I had PLDT, slow everything, sometimes download  to 10 kbs, then no connection for three weeks, constant calling to them for three weeks. Wrote an email to NTC (National Telecommunications Commission). They actually answered with a copy of an email they sent to PLDT in which required an answer from then within 5/10 days.

This got action from PLDT, their truck arrive at the same time "Sky" was installing my new service. Now I get speeds 60/75 mbs download from Sky.

To surf the web do it through your cell phone, direct connect, but fees for down load. What I did with all my problems was to link my computer to the cell phone, the cell phone via Globe to the internet

No internet problems here, it is Cignal Cable tv problems.

I have Cignal satellite dish I have not heard about Cignal cable. Where is there service area.?

Munchie wrote:

I have Cignal satellite dish I have not heard about Cignal cable. Where is there service area.?

It is satellite dish, they treat me like the cable companies in the USA.  Funny thing, I changed plugs in  my house and the picture and sound was back to normal.  Today my 6 months of prepaid service runs out, they are not answering the phone and the place I signed up in Vigan is still padlocked.  Anything or nothing could happen.  They charged me for 4 months of NBA basketball but their contract with the NBA was never renewed.  Guessing if I ever get to speak to them again they will tell me it is my loss.

mugtech wrote:

No internet problems here, it is Cignal Cable tv problems.

"Rage Against the local Internet"

https://coconuts.co/manila/news/rage-ag … onnection/

A 21-year-old local student who smashed a Globe Telecom router because he's had it with its super slow internet connection...goes viral!

Cignal turned off our satellite connection early on 4/28/20, emails and texting have resulted in nothing.  Perhaps their store in Vigan will open as part of the 5/1/20 slight relaxing of Luzon Lockdown.  Not counting on it.

mugtech wrote:

Cignal turned off our satellite connection early on 4/28/20, emails and texting have resulted in nothing.  Perhaps their store in Vigan will open as part of the 5/1/20 slight relaxing of Luzon Lockdown.  Not counting on it.

Rest assured...your bills will be very punctual!

mugtech wrote:

Cignal turned off our satellite connection early on 4/28/20, emails and texting have resulted in nothing.  Perhaps their store in Vigan will open as part of the 5/1/20 slight relaxing of Luzon Lockdown.  Not counting on it.

File a complaint to: [email protected] may get you some results.

Several months ago when I had a on going problem with PLDT, an email yo ntc actually got me answer which I didn't expect. They emailed me a copy of an email they sent to PLDT giving PLDT 5 days.

PLDT arrived in time to watch Sky install my new service.

I have prepaid Cignal. I own the dish and receiver. i throw a 1000 load (The max allow on prepaid)  at it every month and never had a problem.

Right, but how do you pay for it.  We always did cash and the store is still closed, that's all they respond to text messages.  Sent Cignal two emails, no reply.

Headed to the Seven Eleven in Bantay to use their Cliqq computer to load up our Cignal tv.  We had used said computer to pay our electric bill a few months ago when the bank was not taking payments.  Went through the whole routine and printed out our info to pay the clerk, but the printout said that the account number was not correct.  The 7-11 employee said to let him handle it.  He looked at our account 12 digit number, noticed the first four digits were 0000, so he ignored them and just punched in the last 8 digits.  Reminded me of the old Junior high school argument about nothing and zero not being the same thing, still did not work, got the same message.
              Wife heard that the PLDT store was open and could take care of it for us.   When we got there the store was closed, security guard said try next Monday , 5/18, when the GCQ turns into the MGCQ.  Wife kept texting the Vertex store, and she finally got a person instead of the same message of the previous 2 weeks "The store is closed."
              The person said she lived in Bantay and could help us out, she met us at the KFC and climbed into our van.  The wife took her picture with the mask pulled down and took a picture of Arlene's ID.  After all, we were giving her 1,000 pesos, $20, for a month's service.  She took all of our info and said our tv would have to be on when she got us online again.  We dropped her off at the store and went home, turned on the tv, texted her that we were home, and 30 minutes later we were watching GMA-7 news.  Hopefully in 30 days we will not have to do this again because we will be on a flight non-stop to JFK, remembering few things happen here when or how expected.

JFK.....you're a brave man!!!! lol

mugtech wrote:

Headed to the Seven Eleven in Bantay to use their Cliqq computer to load up our Cignal tv.  We had used said computer to pay our electric bill a few months ago when the bank was not taking payments.  Went through the whole routine and printed out our info to pay the clerk, but the printout said that the account number was not correct.  The 7-11 employee said to let him handle it.  He looked at our account 12 digit number, noticed the first four digits were 0000, so he ignored them and just punched in the last 8 digits.  Reminded me of the old Junior high school argument about nothing and zero not being the same thing, still did not work, got the same message.
              Wife heard that the PLDT store was open and could take care of it for us.   When we got there the store was closed, security guard said try next Monday , 5/18, when the GCQ turns into the MGCQ.  Wife kept texting the Vertex store, and she finally got a person instead of the same message of the previous 2 weeks "The store is closed."
              The person said she lived in Bantay and could help us out, she met us at the KFC and climbed into our van.  The wife took her picture with the mask pulled down and took a picture of Arlene's ID.  After all, we were giving her 1,000 pesos, $20, for a month's service.  She took all of our info and said our tv would have to be on when she got us online again.  We dropped her off at the store and went home, turned on the tv, texted her that we were home, and 30 minutes later we were watching GMA-7 news.  Hopefully in 30 days we will not have to do this again because we will be on a flight non-stop to JFK, remembering few things happen here when or how expected.

For future reference, Its the box that needs to be on. TV dont matter.

mugtech wrote:

Right, but how do you pay for it.  We always did cash and the store is still closed, that's all they respond to text messages.  Sent Cignal two emails, no reply.

I use a local business centre that loads just about anything. You can also load it your self by phone with a smart load. Or got to a smart load retailer and have them do it.

This weekend was my first real time being in the Philippines during rainy season.  It rained Saturday morning with some lightening and thunder, scared the puppies. It rained 3 times Saturday and twice on Sunday.  What did each rain have in common?  Each time the satellite tv was suddenly not getting a signal, did not come back on for 10 or 15 minutes each time.  Was very disappointed at 5:35 PM watching GMA news about a landlord who was not paid rent so he removed the doors and roof from the building.  That was the lead in and then the rain took the reception.  Now we will never know the rest of the story.  Really miss Paul Harvey.

Fred wrote:

First things first.

My cable went down a couple of times, both because a thief had split the cable and taken a link to their house so they could watch for free.
Easy to spot unless they did it up a pole - Just follow your wire and see if there are any splitter boxes on the run.

Other than that, water ingress or it could just be high demand because so many are stuck in their homes.

Nice payback might be to apply a current to thief's TV coax cable, which will likely burn out their TV.

mugtech wrote:

This weekend was my first real time being in the Philippines during rainy season.  It rained Saturday morning with some lightening and thunder, scared the puppies. It rained 3 times Saturday and twice on Sunday.  What did each rain have in common?  Each time the satellite tv was suddenly not getting a signal, did not come back on for 10 or 15 minutes each time.  Was very disappointed at 5:35 PM watching GMA news about a landlord who was not paid rent so he removed the doors and roof from the building.  That was the lead in and then the rain took the reception.  Now we will never know the rest of the story.  Really miss Paul Harvey.

You have been having a bad run mugtech, I let Ben pay the bills and he never seems to be a problem. You are right with the rain/thunderstorm, we too have it drop out at times if the storm is south of us.
The other thing that has started to happen recently with both boxes is the picture freezes and need rebooting, not sure if this is our equipment or Cignal.

Hope your flight goes well.

Cheers, Steve.

bigpearl wrote:

The other thing that has started to happen recently with both boxes is the picture freezes and need rebooting, not sure if this is our equipment or Cignal.

Hope your flight goes well.

Cheers, Steve.

Back in the states whenever I got picture freeze it was always a problem that was fixed by the cable company ( Cox) on something outside.

I have Sky here in the Philippines and the  internet (modem/router) was rebooting several times a day all on its own.

A call to Sky and their solution for me is to unplug the modem/router for 5 minutes each morning. So far that seems to be working.

Another problem I have is my "Smart TV"  (Sharp Aquos) (not two years old) is not so smart. At times out of nowhere it will reboot itself 3 or 4 times.

While our no name cheap smart TV is very smart, it's older and never had a problem.

W9XR wrote:

bigpearl wrote:

The other thing that has started to happen recently with both boxes is the picture freezes and need rebooting, not sure if this is our equipment or Cignal.

Hope your flight goes well.

Cheers, Steve.

Back in the states whenever I got picture freeze it was always a problem that was fixed by the cable company ( Cox) on something outside.

I have Sky here in the Philippines and the  internet (modem/router) was rebooting several times a day all on its own.

A call to Sky and their solution for me is to unplug the modem/router for 5 minutes each morning. So far that seems to be working.

Another problem I have is my "Smart TV"  (Sharp Aquos) (not two years old) is not so smart. At times out of nowhere it will reboot itself 3 or 4 times.

While our no name cheap smart TV is very smart, it's older and never had a problem.

Never had cable or sat tv in Oz, only netflix, apple tv, google chrome and smart tv's. Now with the sat we rarely watch anything on the afore mentioned.
The freeze happens every few days so I think it's the equipment and shudder to call out our local installer,,,,,,, I posted somewhere their inept installation debacle a year or more ago.
We purchased a no name brand 55" smart tv 4 years ago and a 65" smart curved screen 2 years ago, they both have Samsung screens but "B" grade,,,,,,,, I can't see a difference. We shipped these as well as a container load of stuff over in Feb 2019 and they are both working without a hitch touch wood. These TV's were under half the price of well known brands.
We purchased a 50" when we lived in Manila 8 years ago, again cheap brand, we gave this to the outlaws when we moved back to Australia, that tv is still going and had a PHP 3K repair done 2 years ago and still working.
Good luck with your smart TV.

Cheers, Steve.