Cox Degrades Signals and Prohibits Cable Box Resets
As soon as Cox went from analog to digital the degradation of reception has steadily gotten worse while they continue to up prices by 8 - 12% per year - supposedly "upgrading" their "infrastructure". SYMPTOMS: Black screen, no audio with a displayable info bar. This went from occasional on one channel to this year multiple channels every night for hours at a time. MPEG macro-blocking with audio drop out. Again initially once in a while, now multiple channels for hours at a time EVERY night. Typically it is 5 sec of audio and video, followed by 30 seconds of macro blocking or picture freeze and no audio repeated for hours on end. Tune to a channel, get 20 - 30 seconds of black before they re-route you to a non-HD channel which takes another 10 seconds to display. The instantaneous freeze with no audio that can only be corrected by switching channels. The usual fix - going to your online account to reset your cable box - still appears in the account. For the past several months they would not allow it after reporting the network was working fine. You select to reset and it denies you saying there IS a network outage they will fix in 12 hours. This past week they simply report "There was a problem and we could not reset your cable box. Try again later" but it NEVER works. I believe they have actually disabled this capability of your account and just won't tell consumers they have done it. Charge you for services they deny you access to. I am being charged for HBO Max, something that should come from my HBO subscription through COX but I can't access it unless I pony up an additional $29 a month for a DVR box. My smart TV would support it through network / internet connection, but I would have to pay HBO directly for it because they say,unlike the old HBO Go I must get it through COX if I want to get it as part of my subscription. They regularly take the entire cable sometimes including internet service offline for hours at a time for "upgrades" which make no changes to the crappy signal quality, bogged down internet connections and glitchiness. Yes, this "improved service" is why our cable bill doubled in 5 years. COX - say it out loud - its all in the name!
I'm in Las Vegas and channel 6 (CW) and channel 12 (MYTV) are not correct.
Cox cable is sending over the wrong channels for CW (6) and MYTV (12) I have called them 2 times and had a tech come to my home. They know nothing about this. All of my neighbors are having the same problem too, so I know it is a Cox cable network problem. Does anyone know anything about this please? This has been going on for about 4 days now. 3 tvs have cable. 2 cable cards (tivo) and 1 mini contour box. All of them are getting the wrong channel. For CW I have a few shows that record, and they actually are correct when it records! BUT in the afternoon if I try to go to CW (6), it shows me Comet channel. MYTV (12) was showing a news channel the first couple days and then a sports channel the last couple days.
Continuosly losing lower end channels
About every 6 weeks we lose a large portion of our subscribed channels. Most of the channels on the highest spectrum (no HD) work just fine. We have a Silicon Dust HDHomeRun Prime (3 tuner cable card) with a Cox provided Cisco STA1520 tuner. On 2 TV's we are still using Microsoft's Media Center - where the problem occurs (works fine with OTA channels when not using Cox). A third TV uses Cox's Mini-box and channels not working on cable cards work fine. On one other TV and two PC's (Win10), we use Silicon Dust's HDHomerun DVR which always works with no loss of channels. Clearly the problem seems to be the cable cards. For some 20+ service calls they usually replace all splitters, and/or several cables, Cox's modem, and have also replaced the cable from our panel to the street. Each time the low signal issue is resolved - for another 6 weeks. I have also replaced my Linksys Router twice. All connections are hard wired. I thought about replacing the HDHomeRun Prime with the new Prime 6, but since I have seen the same issues on the forum with Tivo (also uses cable cards) I'll wait until Cox figures out what the problem seems to be with there cable cards. While Cox's support has been pretty good (other then the repeated issue) It is very apparent that their support of cable cards is very limited. They always send out their "lead" technicians, which also have somewhat limited knowledge (they always fix the immediate issue but can't explain why the problem keeps occurring). Consumers have been using cable cards for several years now, and as media options continue to grow, their use will also grow - this problem needs to be resolved. Please help!
TV Image Freezes and Cannot Watch Prior Station Even After Reboot
I updated my cable box recently before the holidays, a hulking DVR which was almost 8 years old, and have had trouble with my service freezing in all locations of the house (bedrooms, living room, etc.) for about the last month. My wifi has also been going out intermittently, usually at night. Calling the on-call service technicians did not resolve the issue, and they did nothing but belittle me. I finally had a Cox cable service engineer come to my house and test the signal from the street and then coming into the house. It appears that the newer digital cable boxes are more sensitive to transmission connections than the prior digital cable equipment I had. I was getting a fair amount of "ingression" (poor transmission and relay) coming from inadequate connections and incompatible equipment, especially the 10-year old splitters I was using. The service engineer changed out my older splitters, firmed up the connectors throughout, and tightened everything up, making sure that my signal was adequate for the newer equipment. Everything seems to be working fine now, but I was somewhat taken aback by how the newer equipment would not function properly with the cabling I had been using for over 10 years, never having experienced a similar problem before. Coxshould inform customers up front that the newer digital equipment may not be suitable for older house wiring (my house is only 12 years old) and should give you a way to validate your installation before handing you equipment that won't work as it did before. This has been a totally frustrating experience for me as a customer and hopefully this will provide others witha possible explanation forsimilar cable symptoms since I couldn't find anything when I researched this issue.
Contour box slow to record or won't record or cancels my recordings on its own. Freezes.
Contour box slow to record or won't record or cancels my recordings on its own. I just had COX TECH CERTIFY MY HOUSE WITH MULTIPLE TESTING on 11/10/2020. Everything including the Contour TV Cable box checked out good. This has gone on since January 2020. I had 7 boxes in 6 months. Sign up to record 6 shows at once. I only have 1 tv. After a I delete a program. I have to wait 5 minutes to be able to record. This is my 6th box in 7 months. The first box lasted almost 2 years. 6 contour boxes since March 2020. June and July 2020 2 bucket truck Cox techs said there is an ongoing problem in Atlanta. I'm paying for a service that works well half the time. They have been upgrading services around here for severals months now so I get lots of slow downs or no services. I'm sick of calling the Cox Tech Dept about these on going issues.My water line was cut during an additional line was installed.
I had a sub contractor come out to my house who was working for Cox. I was installing an additional cable under my driveway to my shop. He started picking up my driveway with his DitchWitch and then asked to just chip away in front of the driveway. I told him sure so he did that. Everything got installed and within a few days a tech came and finished the install. Lest then a week later I noticed water shooting up from the driveway and then noticed my entire yard was soaked. I called the water company and they came out and said my water meter was spinning a fast as it possibly could. They shut off my water and I called a plumbing service. To make a long story short we had to have a new water line put in from the street to the house, new sod out over the new ditch, concrete put over the trench in the driveway, and reconnection. We were without water at our house for 5 days. I have called Cox so many times about this but they will never call me back. It has now been over a year since they did this and no one at Cox will call me back. I have told the techs that come out and they always say "no problem, they will take care if this for sure". I had a repair issue number but now they say it has been fixed. I have all of the receipts and dates but it looks like Cox is hoping I just guess forget about it. It is especially hard when I am paying over $400.00 a month to them. Does anyone have any suggestions? I am at my wits end about this. Thank you for any comments. Stephenlm1