The Cablecom HD Mediabox is total rubbish

Tech, TV, Mobile, Internet and Geek Corner
61
You can. Using the CI+ adapter, you can use any recorder or TV you want.

62
As a general rule, I don't know anyone who "chose" Cablecom over Swisscom because they had a choice. I know that I didn't. Bluewin TV should be there in a month or so. I was told that over a year ago. Still, not even close. Cablecom here today is better than Bluewin somewhere over the rainbow.

I am horrified to hear that Swisscom is severly limiting their bandwidth. But, I am not surprised. There system isn't like RF based cable. It is based on internet distribution. Therefor if there is a high channel selection there is more likely to be bandwidth limits on the system. Hearing this I am now glad that I have Cablecom. I can put up with the occasional glitch in hardware. I am a Video and Audio engineer and I can't stand crap video or audio.

There, now I feel much better.

63
I had Bluewin TV & Infinity (20mb) Internet from Swisscom and both worked perfectly right from the start, never any glitches, resets etc, and I could download at 3.5MB/s while watching a HD channel, can't remember any problems I had with them. It's a bit pricey though.

I liked the fact that I could disable channels I never watched and have a good overview of what's on TV through the online tv program. Was really satisfied with it, now back in another appartment with CC....

64
I can only agree with the OP on all of the points raised. I have the Phillips HD box, and it's a disgrace to technology (worst than windows 2000 ):

- need to reboot every few days after a freeze

- Feeze sometimes ocurs middle of recording, no auto resume

- remote frequently not responding, I have to get up, walk to the box and press a button on the box (channel or volume) to wake the remote. In a good day it fixes the issue, on a bad day the box reboots (approx 5 minutes)...Very annoying!!!

- Last week I just realised that my regular programs are no longer recorded. It turns out all my pre-set "series" recordings were removed. Now I have to go to "eztv" to download the missed episodes . At least I can get them

I have CC Internet, which I'm also not happy with. Internet speeds never reach the limit I'm paying for. I'm happy when I get 2/3 of the bandwidth, normally less.

Really, really, really fed up ... Sorry, just venting here ... Is there an alternative? Is Swisscom really better? Are there any other players out there?

65
The CC Cisco HD box is not *as* bad as the Philips one. I haven't had anywhere as many freezes (although they still happen occasionally). The biggest problem for me is being completely locked out if recording two channels at once. I felt like throwing the Philips box out of the window many times because of the problems you list.

66
Whilst I dont have CC, I have SC and am perfectly happy with their service.

There seems to be alot of complaints re CC's Philips STB.... in my experience Philips make some pretty crappy electronics. Perhaps that's part of the problem?

67
Actually, my experience has been that Philips hardware is generally OK, but its firmware is pretty crappy.

I think in this case, however, the firmware was at least partially customised by Cablecom.

68
Someone else I know just switched from the SD recorder to the HD (Cisco) and he's unhappy with it, slow & unresponsive... oh dear, I'm not feeling the love for cc here.

69
What I don't understand is how can CC get away with charging premium prices on such sub-standard service? It seems it's not just a few isolated cases. Is there a government body, ombudsman?, one can complain to?

70
Regardless of cablecom or swisscom, when do you think we will see new HD channels in Switzerland... I mean, Classica HD... come on! I like classical music but please!!!

ITV HD, FOX HD, and in my dreams HBO HD etc etc etc.

anyone got any predictions... eg friendly kiwi?

71
I have the Cisco. It is slow to respond and locks up every day. The menu system is average.

72
I have taken the plunge and did the upgrade in the CC service point in Zurich on Friday lunchtime, with the assurance that the box would be working in 2 hours and certainly by the time I got home.

As I handed my Philips SD recorder over the guy said "it is the best box CC do", and that the "Cisco HD box is a little better than Philps HD box which is very bad".... hardly a glowing recommendation but on my subsciption it is 56 chf rather than 91 for 4x faster internet, feecalls and HD so...

However, here I sit 38 hours and 4 calls to CC later staring at the same message not the Monaco GP

The gospel from CC technical support is, "getting a box from the service point can actually take longer to get activated that ordering on line".... go figure

EDIT: Today (Mon) out of nowhere by post came another Cisco box??? After the 8th call to CC, it transpires that the system, and for some unexplained reason overode the dude in the service point, cancelled the new box that he set up, and shipped me another! Hence the reason for the box from Friday not working, ..... This one now works a little slowly, and with a few strange things but it works.... happy days.

73
To answer my own question, it looks like we will get MTV HD within a week or two, having taken one of my cursory repetitive glances at the cablecom website recently.

74
I'm not really liking the new EPG, is there a way to put a scroll lock on? It's really slow and unnecessary to scroll all the channels up and down and makes browsing a real pain.

75
you can use page up and page down cyrus rather than just up and down.... how about that!!! :-)

76
Yesterday I had a problem with the Cisco HD box (couldn't sync properly with the TV across HDMI, causing the picture to flash on and off), so I cycled the power.

The display on the front of the box showed the usual "LOAD" message, followed by "Init" where it appeared to get stuck.

A call to the Cablecom helpline got me out of this: pressing the red Cablecom button twice on the remote brought me into the original setup menu (with country selection). From this I was able to get it all working again, with no loss of saved programmes.

So, kudos to Cablecom support!

77
I have received the Mediabox HD about a week ago.

Now I have a little problem that when using HDMI, the screen gets black for a moment every couple of minutes. When using SCART there are no problems.

Does anyone else have this problem too?

78

Not me, have you tried changing HDMI cables ?

79
No, no, no, this doesn't work. You can rarely see the full name of the programmes in the EPG, so even though I have the list narrowed down to only my favourites, and get a rough overview with page up and down, you still need to move around to get the full details of the progs.

Although there were fewer channels on screen in the previous version, it was much quicker as the pages stayed locked and wouldn't scroll till you got to the first or last channel, as it should be.

If the scrolling were quick and smooth, it wouldn't be a problem, unfortunately it's slow and jerky.

80
How old is your television?

The reason I ask is that the HDMI standards as implemented can cause video problems if your equipment is too far off from each other.