Recent Discussions
Tired of unwatchable programs
Tonight I was trying to watch Clerks on 247 NEXTHD. It was not watchable. When it did play it often was in blotchy mode. It even BACKED UP and repeated something from several second ago.. Last week I was trying to watch a World Cup repeat on FS2. You couldn't follow the ball, or the play, because it stopped every few seconds. I've had this service for a couple of years now and this is a new problem.
Cloud Based DVR in RI Bad too...
(Dec 25, 2021) - High Paying Customer - ready to pull plug Same issues as others describe for Cloud-Based DVR Recordings and Playback here in Coastal RI. We record Jeopardy, National News, PBS Nova, Etc.. for playback and viewing at our leisure. So often the viewing of playback has issue. Blank or Empty segment of recording that causes playback (or Fast Forwarding) to Freeze DVR and System so badly we have to reboot local control box whenever hard freeze occurs. Super frustrating when its almost every night trying to catch up on multiple episodes of favorite show, etc... The issue I agree can be sporadic. Sometimes horrendous maybe after local storm or partial outages within the COX system wherein we don't lose TV service but Cloud DVR playback behaving really poorly. Other times there is no rhyme or reason for poor behavior - it just happens and we find ourselves having to lighting Forward past some dead piece of segment in the recorded show to get to go segment, or it freezes during this process - Errors, yes the ones shown in this post - then hard crashes requiring a full Control Box reboot - all quite standard in our home with 1GB Service at $200 / month - 3 Control Boxes (Bdrm / Main Rm / Upstairs family Rm). Note at these rates for 3.5 years averaged over life of subscription so far - have spent ~$7,000 with COX to date and will be nearly $9,000 when I'm done with them. That's a lot of cash when you add up the many subscribers within these posts having issue with their equipment and services! Clearly COX is aware of this issue with their Cloud-based DVR service and while they can say its likely an individual house or residence problems, clearly with so many reported cases - they need to do a Deep-dive to resolve or possibly lose many subscribers in regions where other providers are offering competitive packages and pricing. At this point we've been using COX equipment and services for going on 4 yrs as we were told when we moved to S. RI they were a solid choice. At this point however with their ever rising costs, the constant need to call and negotiate and renegotiate and then to see them sneak back more new Broadcast and TV charges onto the monthly billing - the "shine" of COX services has significantly dulled. Previously we were reasonably happy Verizon customers for 18 plus years in MA - at least No Service issues like this - albeit we used their physical DVR unit for recordings since Cloud-based not an option. Now with so many of our neighbors choosing to switch back to Verizon FIOS for many of the failings and issues with COX such as this ones and others including constant price bloating games. They actually said on phone our monthly costs were up to something like $300 / month but thanks to the generous promotional offerings they reduced it to $200 - albeit with new constantly creeping charge increases - really ridiculous. So looking forward to when my CONTRACT is up and can pull plug on COX and move back to Verizon FIOSContour DVR is garbage
This will be a major rant. We moved into our new house 2 years agon and since then nothing but issues with Contour's so called DVR. At the time we signed up for it nobody said anything about it being a cloud DVR (guess I should have researched it more). We came over from Directv because att was a major pain to deal with on billing but it seems Cox has followed in their footsteps. My issues are as follows. 1. Recordings are cut short and not by just a minute or 2 but a 1 hour show records 5 secs, a few minutes and then just stops recording. 2. Trying to rewind or fast forward a show at least 50% of the time results in delay and the screen appears to freeze and then the message that says there was an issue on our end or restart the box and tighten the connections on the box and at the wall. This is a major load of ** from COX which is nothing more than an excuse for old, outdated and crappy equipment. 3. Also whenever the internet goes down we cannot watch anything since the so called dvr is in the cloud and not a physical drive so there in lies another issue. In my opinion if I wanted to stream everything which in case you did not realize it yet is exactly what you are doing, the contour box is nothing more than a large oversized Amazon Firestick, Roku Box or any of many streaming devices. Oh and the picture quality on my 4k tv ** since I just discovered COXis downgrading the video to 720. 4. If I call in or chat with someone the first thing they say is we need to restart your box and if I hear that again I will explode and at this moment I am about to throw COX in the garbage and go somewhere else where at least I will get the same crappy billing issues and most likely service as well and by the way I do not like Century Link for internet because of the issues we had when they were qwest. End of rant
ALL Cox Channels Have DISAPPEARED!!
Turn on the cable box and all you see is COX and five blocks through which a blue block keeps cycling, then an "Info" banner that says the signal is "temporarily unavailable - watch another channel" except ALL the channels say the same thing. Try to reset the cable box and of course COX says, "Outage in you area. We will fix it as soon as we can". But its going into the second day. Off course, being an unregulated government sanctioned monopoly, NO CREDIT FOR DAYS OF LOST SERVICE will be offered AND NO RUSH TO FIX IT WILL BE MADE. Twice in the last two months we were told of a planned outage to upgrade the system so we would have oh, so much better service (even though it is still worse, more unreliable, more intermittent than in the days of analog service in the 80's and 90's). Once by email, it would happen on July 6, they said. WRONG! On July 8, they email to say the wonderful update was done, and oh how lucky we are to NOW have such great reliable service. WRONG - NEVER HAPPENED! Then by door hanger on July 27. WRONG - NEVER HAPPENED! So is this >24 hour outage supposed to be the 6-hour outage that never happened? I doubt it! IT IS JUST A CONTINUED ABUSE OF CUSTOMERS SUBJECTED TO A GOVERNMENT GRANTED TV AND INTERNET MONOPOLY IN AN AREA WHERE THERE IS NO OTA CAPABILITY, AND COX HAS "CONVINCED" LOCAL OFFICIALS TO DENY PERMITS FOR COMPETITORS WHO WANTED TO RUN FIBRE-OPTIC FOR COMPETING SERVICES. "COX" - say it out loud - its all in the name.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!
DVR not working; cnF9 error
My DVR box (Cisco 8742HDC) stopped working around 1230 PM. I checked the cables (use a splitter with my panoramic wifi modem) and tried to reset it from the COX website, but received the "unable to reset receiver, try again in a few minutes" message. I tried again about ten minutes later, no change. I unplugged the power source from the box, waited two minutes then plugged it back in. It cycled through to the "Welcome to COX" screen but never actually made it to the program guide. After trying this a third time, my areahad a thunderstormwhich caused apower outage for about an hour. Once it returned, the box went through the usual boot up process, but now is frozen with the "Welcome to COX. We're loading the Interactive Program Guide" screen and the front of the box reads the "cnF9" error code(or config as I have seen in other posts). It has been like this for the past2 hours and still has not returned. Every once in a while the "Please wait" blue dots that form a circle will move, as if to show progress. I have had this box about four months after having the previousmodel for four years. That box "died" after having a similar issue where it would not record and then it froze on the DVR recordings screen. I lost all my recordings that time and am mentally prepared to lose the recordings on this DVR again. Is it time for another box?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.Horrible service for over a month!
Come on cox get it together! It’s been over a month of just absolute horrible service! The sound keeps cutting in and out and the shows freeze! I’ll be super interested in a show and just at a part that I’ve been waiting to hear the sound cuts out ugh! I’ll try to rewind and it won’t rewind and just go back to live making me completely miss the part in the show I needed to see or hear! Also then I can’t rewind at all when I should be able to! It’s also pathetic cox only lets u rewind less than thirty minutes when direct tv lets u rewind four hours back if u wanted as long as u have been on that channel for that long! And u can only pause the tv for like five minutes before it kicks u off! Cox has gone completely downhill and we completely regret going back to cox! I wish the sales guy for cox would have never talked my dad into getting us to use cox again! The only good thing I like is the voice button to speak what u want to watch other than that it’s ** and I’m getting so tired of not getting to watch a full episode without something going wrong during it! I have to go watch my Netflix if I want to watch something without sound issues or the show freezing ugh! I know I’m repeating myself but u have no idea how frustrating it is to miss parts in a show and every show! We even had a couple techs out to our house and they don’t fix anything and then this last one couldn’t even come inside like seriously what’s the point of sending out a tech guy if he can’t come in and try to help us with this horrible service! Ridiculous cox just ridiculous!
On Demand Movie Buffering and Freezing up
Every time I rent a movie the video freezes every 5 to 10 seconds like, it is buffering. I have spent $20 on movies I can't watch! Does anyone know how to fix this? I have unplugged the boxes, modem, router, reset video signal, called Cox tech support, no help!