Well, that was a waste of time

[elizabeth]

My hubby settled down with a friend last night to watch the football, from the start it was buffering every few seconds, virtually impossible to watch, he did however try to persevere.
I did a speed test, 0.32, worse than useless, I managed to get hold of Multimax who informed me that it was probably a problem with the base station following a power cut in the afternoon, this was 10.15 pm. The boys struggled on trying to watch the match, which was rubbish anyway, but when it had finished and the pundits were giving their opinions it was absolutely fine
I know that Internet speeds can't be guaranteed but that was unacceptable, sorry Multimax but it seems to be happening far too often of late.

[Mountain Edge]

Sadly, my reception was perfect and had to endure the whole match uninterrupted. I have Multimax as well so it must be a local problem

[genghis]

Use filmon.com as a backup. It's free!

[Johnny Lee]

We use film on via Extend. Fairly good of late. But you did not miss much , The stats. and the Pundits reckon we are superb. But my opinion is the opposite. Superb equals goals in the net. I don't think we looked like scoring once. Wales are far superior to us at present.

Hope we can improve on this.

[elizabeth]

Use filmon.com as a backup. It's free!

You still need Internet for Filmon

[Keithcaley]

...You still need Internet for Filmon

You are quite right, of course, however it's not as daft as it sounds!

Filmon reqires less bandwidth (speed) than most of the 'high definition' sources, and will work reasonably well on on a moderately poor connection.

I would say that if you experience buffering, then the first thing to do is to power down all equipment, including the little adaptor that powers the receiving dish, count to ten, kick it (joke), and then power it all up again.

If you still have less than 4Mbps speed after all that, then Multimax would consider it to be a fault situation, and should investigate the cause. If your situation/ experience differs, then you should complain directly to the Managing Director, Kemal Basat. - NOT post on HERE !

Best wishes, Keith

[elizabeth]

Tried all the usual things Keith but to no avail, and I am entitled to an opinion, even on Multimax, so please don't tell me what I can or can't post on here, that is up to the mods, not you, or are you the forum police.

[Keithcaley]

Tried all the usual things Keith but to no avail, and I am entitled to an opinion, even on Multimax, so please don't tell me what I can or can't post on here, that is up to the mods, not you, or are you the forum police.

Elizabeth, with the greatest respect, could you please tell me precisely where I told you what you could or could not post on here?

Furthermore, my post contained no criticism of you whatsoever, and consisted entirely of helpful general advice.

I eagerly await your response,
Regards,
Keith.

p.s. Your post didn't mention that you had tried 'all the usual things' - whatever you mean by that! - The steps that I mentioned, perhaps? - It is difficult to know unless you state exactly what those steps were! Also, just as it is your right to post what you want, so it is mine

[MoonageDaydream]

I watched the match on FilmOn via my computer.

It did buffer a few times, but not long enough to spoil the game.

[Keithcaley]

I think that people in general have come to expect that TV via the Internet will be as consistently reliable as it used to be when we all relied on aerials stuck on our rooves (or roofs, if you prefer ) pointed at the local TV transmitter.

Unfortunately, due to the way that the Internet is currently set up, that will never be the case - unless something radical is done to redefine the transmission protocols, worldwide.

I was in the UK last month, and watched a fair bit of TV - on BBC iPlayer, Via the Internet, with BT as the ISP, on a connection that was subscribed to an expensive, fast package.

Guess what?

Yep! - Buffering! - on 4 separate occasions, most likely due to the BBC server being unable to cope with the demand - nothing to do with our Internet connection, or BT.

What chance have we got, living on an island where the infrastructure is so inadequate that they have to rely on wireless networks to give us internet coverage, and embargoes which means that all our internet has to go via Turkey, and constant power cuts causing the internet distribution towers to go off line unpredictably?

I consider it to be a near miracle that watching TV via the Internet is possible AT ALL, not that it sometimes doesn't work...

Virtually 100% perfect TV reception & reliability is possible here, but only by using Satellite dishes, receivers and subscriptions, not via the Internet!

[jofra]

Good points; I'm in the UK at the moment - was watching the TT each day the other week, and usually one or two other programs each week on catchup (via KODI), all on my laptop with a 30MB cable provider (Virgin) - and buffering still occurs occasionally....
Other internet use (browsing/downloading) never seems to suffer any noticeable problems, so with the much lower bandwidth that is available in Cyprus, I think we do pretty well when we're over there...

[elizabeth]

Buffering was constant throughout the 90 minutes of the match, a speed of 0.32 was not going to be anywhere near enough. As I said in my original post I do accept that speeds cannot be guaranteed but 0.32 is unacceptable by anyone's standards.

[RAZR63]

I think that people in general have come to expect that TV via the Internet will be as consistently reliable as it used to be when we all relied on aerials stuck on our rooves (or roofs, if you prefer ) pointed at the local TV transmitter.

Unfortunately, due to the way that the Internet is currently set up, that will never be the case - unless something radical is done to redefine the transmission protocols, worldwide.

I was in the UK last month, and watched a fair bit of TV - on BBC iPlayer, Via the Internet, with BT as the ISP, on a connection that was subscribed to an expensive, fast package.

Guess what?

Yep! - Buffering! - on 4 separate occasions, most likely due to the BBC server being unable to cope with the demand - nothing to do with our Internet connection, or BT.

What chance have we got, living on an island where the infrastructure is so inadequate that they have to rely on wireless networks to give us internet coverage, and embargoes which means that all our internet has to go via Turkey, and constant power cuts causing the internet distribution towers to go off line unpredictably?

I consider it to be a near miracle that watching TV via the Internet is possible AT ALL, not that it sometimes doesn't work...

Virtually 100% perfect TV reception & reliability is possible here, but only by using Satellite dishes, receivers and subscriptions, not via the Internet!

Well said Keith ,,,,,, it's all about demand.

[Keithcaley]

Buffering was constant throughout the 90 minutes of the match, a speed of 0.32 was not going to be anywhere near enough. As I said in my original post I do accept that speeds cannot be guaranteed but 0.32 is unacceptable by anyone's standards.

Hi elizabeth,

I do sympathise that you were unable to watch your programme, believe me, and I don't think that I managed to get my point across properly in my original post (and by the way, my last post was not 'aimed at you' but was a comment on the expectations of 'people in general').

Let me explain it a different way...

Under 'normal' circumstances, when you perform a Speed Test on the Multimax website, it shows how good the connection is between your machine and the nearest Multimax server - which is normally Kyrenia.
The way that MMX have set up their equipment, in the absence of a 'local' fault, you should always be able to get a speed reading of 4Mbps (or greater) when doing a MMX speedtest.

If you can't, then it's nothing to do with the general connection of the Island to the rest of the World via Turkey, or TTNET, it is definitely a 'local' problem, which should be 'fixable', and I'll come back to that in just a minute or two.

On the other hand, you can have a situation where you get a speedtest result of 4Mbps or even much faster than that, but still experience 'buffering' - this is usually due to 'Circumstances Beyond Our Control' as they say (not MY control, I hasten to add, it's nothing to do with me ) - in other words, some factor beyond Kyrenia, like the fibre-optic cables to Turkey, or even further away in Romania (as happened a few days ago). Where that is the case, we're all stuffed, you won't get anyone coming on here saying smugly "Well, mine was alright!" - everyone will be complaining, or in the pub

Anyway, back to the scenario that you actually experienced, a very low speedtest result to the MMX server in Kyrenia...

As far as I can make out, by far and away the most common cause would be a Power Cut - not necessarily one affecting your house, but one affecting your local MMX relay tower - the one to which your little Internet dish is pointed. If that tower goes 'off-line' or gets scrambled due to a power cut or a power surge, then your dish automatically searches for another signal, and it may well find one from another Tower. The problem with this, is that because your dish is not aligned and adjusted to optimise reception from this other tower, the signal is a lot weaker, resulting in exceedingly slow connection speeds - such as you experienced. My understanding is that Power Cuts and surges can also simply cause your local tower to lock onto the wrong part of the 'relay chain' - i.e. another part of the chain of towers that carry the signal between Kyrenia and you, resulting in much the same symptoms.

In these circumstances, I'm afraid that the 'Stiff Upper Lip' approach of 'Persevere, or Grin and Bear it' won't get you anywhere - it is obviously a fault, and will require some outside intervention to restore normal operation. This is where 'power cycling' ALL of the equipment comes in - when it all boots back up, provided that your local tower is now operating normally, your dish will lock onto the correct, strongest signal, and off you go. It's worth doing this before you contact MMX, 'cos it's quite likely to be the first thing that they will ask you to do!

If there is still a problem with your local tower, or another one further down the line between you and Kyrenia, then it is up to MMX to investigate, and to decide whether 're-booting' the affected section will fix the problem or whether they need to despatch a maintenance team. This is really why it is essential for the customer to understand the way that the system works well enough to be able to determine very early on whether a reception problem is due to a local fault, or due to one further afield, and to notify MMX at the beginning, rather than 'soldiering on', hoping that things will improve.

I would hazard a guess that in the particular case which you have reported, MMX traced the fault, and fixed it by re-booting something somewhere down the line, or by sending a team out to replace something, which is why reception eventually improved. Don't forget that there are several ways to contact MMX, apart from 'phone, there is email, & the on-line 'chat' or text fault reporting feature, but whichever method you use (and I have resorted to all of them on occasion) you need to report the fault as soon as you realise that there is a problem.

Of course, there are hundreds of other reasons why reception can be affected, and the operator may run through some other possibilities with you - leading to the occasional ribald comments on here about baby alarms et al, but they do have to run through a fault-finding routine in a logical manner if there isn't an obvious cause - after all, every day, faults do occur in customer's homes, and until the operator eliminates the obvious, they can't even start to put things right.

Having re-read my original respons to you, I can see where you might have thought that I was telling you 'what to post and what not to post', when I said that the correct course of action was to " complain directly to the Managing Director, Kemal Basat. - NOT post on HERE !" if the operators did not promptly identify and fix your problem. I apologise for not making it clear that this was intended as advice on how to get your problem fixed, not an admonition on what to post!

Kemal really does care about his service (although I have to say that he's fairly crap at dealing with actual people sometimes - they should keep him well away from compaining customers ) - and would always investigate those occasions where the service staff have not done their jobs properly.

Anyway, I realise that this is not exactly 'light reading', but if it has given you and others an insight into some of the possible causes of poor tv reception, and a clear idea of what to do and when to do it (Straight away ! ) then it will have served its purpose.

[jllvehdist]

Buffering was constant throughout the 90 minutes of the match, a speed of 0.32 was not going to be anywhere near enough. As I said in my original post I do accept that speeds cannot be guaranteed but 0.32 is unacceptable by anyone's standards.

Hi elizabeth,

I do sympathise that you were unable to watch your programme, believe me, and I don't think that I managed to get my point across properly in my original post (and by the way, my last post was not 'aimed at you' but was a comment on the expectations of 'people in general').

Let me explain it a different way...

Under 'normal' circumstances, when you perform a Speed Test on the Multimax website, it shows how good the connection is between your machine and the nearest Multimax server - which is normally Kyrenia.
The way that MMX have set up their equipment, in the absence of a 'local' fault, you should always be able to get a speed reading of 4Mbps (or greater) when doing a MMX speedtest.

If you can't, then it's nothing to do with the general connection of the Island to the rest of the World via Turkey, or TTNET, it is definitely a 'local' problem, which should be 'fixable', and I'll come back to that in just a minute or two.

On the other hand, you can have a situation where you get a speedtest result of 4Mbps or even much faster than that, but still experience 'buffering' - this is usually due to 'Circumstances Beyond Our Control' as they say (not MY control, I hasten to add, it's nothing to do with me ) - in other words, some factor beyond Kyrenia, like the fibre-optic cables to Turkey, or even further away in Romania (as happened a few days ago). Where that is the case, we're all stuffed, you won't get anyone coming on here saying smugly "Well, mine was alright!" - everyone will be complaining, or in the pub

Anyway, back to the scenario that you actually experienced, a very low speedtest result to the MMX server in Kyrenia...

As far as I can make out, by far and away the most common cause would be a Power Cut - not necessarily one affecting your house, but one affecting your local MMX relay tower - the one to which your little Internet dish is pointed. If that tower goes 'off-line' or gets scrambled due to a power cut or a power surge, then your dish automatically searches for another signal, and it may well find one from another Tower. The problem with this, is that because your dish is not aligned and adjusted to optimise reception from this other tower, the signal is a lot weaker, resulting in exceedingly slow connection speeds - such as you experienced. My understanding is that Power Cuts and surges can also simply cause your local tower to lock onto the wrong part of the 'relay chain' - i.e. another part of the chain of towers that carry the signal between Kyrenia and you, resulting in much the same symptoms.

In these circumstances, I'm afraid that the 'Stiff Upper Lip' approach of 'Persevere, or Grin and Bear it' won't get you anywhere - it is obviously a fault, and will require some outside intervention to restore normal operation. This is where 'power cycling' ALL of the equipment comes in - when it all boots back up, provided that your local tower is now operating normally, your dish will lock onto the correct, strongest signal, and off you go. It's worth doing this before you contact MMX, 'cos it's quite likely to be the first thing that they will ask you to do!

If there is still a problem with your local tower, or another one further down the line between you and Kyrenia, then it is up to MMX to investigate, and to decide whether 're-booting' the affected section will fix the problem or whether they need to despatch a maintenance team. This is really why it is essential for the customer to understand the way that the system works well enough to be able to determine very early on whether a reception problem is due to a local fault, or due to one further afield, and to notify MMX at the beginning, rather than 'soldiering on', hoping that things will improve.

I would hazard a guess that in the particular case which you have reported, MMX traced the fault, and fixed it by re-booting something somewhere down the line, or by sending a team out to replace something, which is why reception eventually improved. Don't forget that there are several ways to contact MMX, apart from 'phone, there is email, & the on-line 'chat' or text fault reporting feature, but whichever method you use (and I have resorted to all of them on occasion) you need to report the fault as soon as you realise that there is a problem.

Of course, there are hundreds of other reasons why reception can be affected, and the operator may run through some other possibilities with you - leading to the occasional ribald comments on here about baby alarms et al, but they do have to run through a fault-finding routine in a logical manner if there isn't an obvious cause - after all, every day, faults do occur in customer's homes, and until the operator eliminates the obvious, they can't even start to put things right.

Having re-read my original respons to you, I can see where you might have thought that I was telling you 'what to post and what not to post', when I said that the correct course of action was to " complain directly to the Managing Director, Kemal Basat. - NOT post on HERE !" if the operators did not promptly identify and fix your problem. I apologise for not making it clear that this was intended as advice on how to get your problem fixed, not an admonition on what to post!

Kemal really does care about his service (although I have to say that he's fairly crap at dealing with actual people sometimes - they should keep him well away from compaining customers ) - and would always investigate those occasions where the service staff have not done their jobs properly.

Anyway, I realise that this is not exactly 'light reading', but if it has given you and others an insight into some of the possible causes of poor tv reception, and a clear idea of what to do and when to do it (Straight away ! ) then it will have served its purpose.

Bloody Hell Keith that was incredible..

If I was head man at MM I'd offer you what ever you wanted to become PR manager for the company.

Replace that delightful lady behind the counter. Whose standard reply is " you haven't reset your router for 10 days"

Again a great post.